Macintosh at 25: Still the innovation leader

Iria

On January 24, 1984, the Macintosh came into the world, starting the second major revolution in the personal computer industry. Steve Jobs and team took some lessons from Xerox PARC and created the first user-friendly, mass market computer.
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Source: Outside the Lines

BlueMak

They were first to release to public their GUI driven OS, not the first to make one. They just had more money, meh.

Hopefuly the next 25 years will not be known as the time Apple was only a mp3 player maker.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Lowfat

It says right in the article that they idea was taken for Xerox.

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BlueMak

My comment was not directed to the author.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zardon

Thats a bit harsh man, I get your point a little but we could apply a more damning analogy to Microsoft and them throwing 10 times the amount of people at windows OS and taking 10 years longer to get it right couldnt we?. With regards to the MP3 comment, Apple laptops sell very well across the globe. Latest industry figures ive received is that they have virtually doubled in market percentage over the last year. (Equally so their desktop sales are worse recently - that is true).

I have to say im still stunned how many anti apple enthusiasts there are on DH. I fail to understand why people can't enjoy both. Maybe im a freak !

BlueMak

Ah, you see, the problem in my case goes back in the mid 80's. I was an Atari guy (and Amiga later on), and the elitism from Apple users was great even? then. Of course it wasn't just the me and you users, but anyway. Even those days you could buy a more powerful specced system from anothe vendor for a fraction of the price you needed for an Apple, yet the Apple users and sellers were acting like there is no other computer than Apple computers. The same thing happens today, not perhaps that bad with their computers, but with their Ipods. There were plenty of mp3 players before the ipods, and there were other and IMO far better, mp3 players now. Yet the owners of them and journalists and "journalists" can't stop but referring to every single mp3 player as an "ipod" or implying or just saying that basicaly Apple invented the mp3 player. Same thing with their OS and a few other things over the decades.
I don't know, perhaps I am getting too old and grumpy

You might be a freak, but you at least are a lovable freak.

I am not anti Apple for their products, those I could like (Air), those that I like (Final Cut Pro for my studies), or just dismiss (all the rest), but their whole attitude is that pisses me off.

I am not so much a pro Microsoft. but at least, from my experience, they are not talking like they control the market all the time (which they do lol).

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zardon

Actually I do know this because in the 80s I was a GEM Atari ST user then I moved onto the Amiga & workbench, which cost me a fortune. I could never afford a Mac and the few people I knew who had them were very patronising.

I started work in the graphics industry in 1988 and I used the little SE, black and white screens, with OS6, which was basically just two floppy discs. I am talking about the days before even Quarkxpress reinvented the DTP profession. I used Photoshop V1 and Pagemaker. Macs were just mindblowing back then and I don't think anyone who grew up in the 90s really gets just how important they were. At this stage you would have paid £5,000 for something like a CX which was a 68040 processor at 33mhz.

So those who worked with me in the design industry were so into macintoshes that it was a goal to be able to afford one (and we could then nab all the expensive software to take home). I still remember getting my first macintosh and it cost me virtually 5 months salary.

At this stage I was fully aware of the "mac snobbery" because I was one of the few people who was at home building cheap 286/386/486 pc's to play mechwarrior (and fighting with high memory) and I had a great grounding on these at an early stage. If I mentioned a PC in work, I was virtually laughed at.

So as the years passed, I played with all the windows systems, from dos, 3.1, 95. 98 you name it.

Then when windows 2000 hit with premptive multitasking and protected memory, the design industry started to embrace PCs because they were cheaper, more diverse for modding and more upgradable. I was then surprisingly in the position of being able to use both to a very high level and no one else in my building even knew what a secondary mouse button was.

I guess I had the last laugh. But the thing is, I have always been so in love with the macintosh as a platform, the styling, the interface and the overall polish that I can't take my dislike out on the idiots who used them and place it onto the computers themselves.

its the same with linux, i try all the distros on dual boots, why? because im a knowledge freak.

BlueMak

Well, you are a better person than I am.

Yeah, we better not start about linux too, some of them make apple users look like Gate's lap dogs.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zardon

Yeah I guess you are right. best way to deal with things, is just to evaluate something on your own views rather than listen to other people. Most people are idiots anyway

BlueMak

I will drink to that! (apple juice)

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

WaltC

I think the author, as is generally true of most pieces written these days by Mac aficionados, is fairly confused on a number of points. Long after color computing became standard everywhere else, the Mac remained a black & white/gray-scale display despite also being an extremely overpriced box with teeny-tiny screens, and shipped with a single-tasking OS long after even Windows had moved to the bare standard of cooperative multitasking.

When I was creating 4096-color, 30-fps animation for export to NTSC tape on an Amiga, the Mac was still running black and white/gray-scale displays, still with comparatively tiny screens. Even after Jobs left Apple somewhat involuntarily, his ensuing project, the NeXT computer (which OS incidentally forms the basis of OSX and was based on an x86-compatible Unix footprint), remained a gray-scale box, also extremely over priced, and so unsurprisingly was a total flop commercially. When Jobs came back to Apple he was able to convince the squeamish and inexperienced and timid Apple board at the time to provide him with > $512M which he then used to pay off the debts he had run up in creating his NeXT flop.

Of course, as Zardon also knows, the Commodore Amiga beat both Apple and Microsoft to the preemptively multitasking state by at least a decade. And to my knowledge, the Commodore 64, which was much closer to the Mac of the day than the Amiga in terms of technical innovation imo, outsold the Mac by leaps and bounds--because it was priced right.

Since then Apple inexorably has moved completely away from its own technical innovation and towards the much more economically viable x86 (Intel) platform standards, such as USB, PCI, AGP, PCIe, IDE, SATA, etc., until at one point the only non-Intel component to be found in a pre-Intel Mac was the cpu. And as we all know, now that single distinction itself is no longer true--the Mac platform from top to bottom is entirely bog-standard x86. That hardly seems to me the stuff of innovation, but at least we are spared the continuing calumny of Jobs' invectives as to how inferior are Intel-standard x86 cpus....

What has always baffled me about Mac proponents has been their egregiously high regard for superficiality. Things like case designs, case colors, plastics, and one-piece computers (which I think are dinosaurs and extremely impractical) seem to impress them mightily. They consider these superficial things to basically be the nuts & bolts of "innovation." Let's face it--even with simple technical innovations like the two-button mouse Apple has always been way behind the curve.

Market share? Good grief, Mac market share today is not even close to the market-share Apple held well over a decade ago in the early 90's, when at its Zenith the Mac's share of the international market was around ~10% or so. In the US today, the Mac's share is about half of that, and internationally it is much worse, hovering around a perpetual ~3% or so outside the US. In countries like India, last time I looked, it holds steady at ~1% or so.

I think a notable Apple "innovation" of late is that a few years ago Apple officially removed the word "computer" from its trademark name--and I am sure that today there are some who do not know that Apple was formerly known as Apple Computer.

But when we consider the iPod and the iPhone, non-computer products which currently provide Apple with the great bulk of its income and profits, removing the word "Computer" from the company name is anything but surprising. Still, it is surprising to see people mistakenly talk about what a great "innovator" in the general computer markets Apple has been. I'll grant you that in terms of the "outside" of the box, Apple has been innovative. But in terms of what makes a computer a computer? Not a chance, imo...

Zardon

as always WaltC a rather interesting viewpoint !

WaltC

Here's wishing you, Zardon, and all of DH's regular readers, the happiest and best of New Years!....

Zardon

Thanks Buddy, nice to see you around again best to you and the family man.

mkk

I've always wanted to try the Mac operating systems at home, but so far they just wont let you. There has always been this chunk of inarguably overpriced hardware that sits in the way. But as I expect their system sales to go down sharply over this year due to the economy while their "peripherals" segment keep doing well, perhaps they could come to the conclusion that there wouldn't be too much to loose at selling their OS to the general PC crowd, at a good profit too of course.

Zardon

To be honest I dont think they are all overpriced.

The macbook Air, retails here at £1200. you get an LED screen, 1.6ghz custom intel dual core, thinnest laptop possible with ambient sensors and backlit keyboard. Other comparible super portables have 1.2 ULV cpus and cost around £1,400 from the likes of Sony Etc, smaller screens, lower res, annoying keyboard sizes.

Their 17 inch Macbook pro costs around £1900. which is £100 more than something like the Asus VX3 (which we reviewed).

You get an LED screen at 1920x1200 which you dont on the VX3 (its also vastly superior technically), you get more ram, a bigger HDD, you get more connectivity (firewire 400 and 800), you get dual DVI out supporting up to 2560x1600 via 512mb NV graphics and you get a 4 hour battery life without ruining the shape of the machine - you also get a pure metal chassis as well as ambient sensors for auto screen and keyboard light adjustments. Obviously I know this comparison isn't ideal as the VX3 is smaller, but they are both "elite" high end machines with a set emphasis on style.

Equally so their 8 core xeon desktops start at around £1,700 in the UK, if you don't look at their extortionate ram prices and can manually upgrade yourself, I think these are pretty decent value. Obviously not the best value, but I think thats a common failing enmasse. They aren't really meant to be run of mill machines - its always been Apple's ethic. A little like Alienware or Voodoo on the PC side.

mkk

Sure their problem today is the lack of low-to-medium budgetline of systems. Few people will be eyeing even the older Air model this year unless the economy makes an unexpected turn upwards. The low end Macbook costs about a third more than better equipped PC laptops here in Sweden at least, where Mac laptops have also been the only type of Mac that have been selling in any numbers. Only the US market seems different to any higher degree for Apple.

Zardon

maybe they will make a cheap ass netbook like everyone else. who knows.

Iria

Since there has been some comment here about Mac aficianados, and Apple aficianados as well, did anyone see the recent hilarious Mapple spoof on the Simpsons? It was great. You can watch it via Hulu here, if you're interested.

Zardon

can only be streamed within the united states, but I saw it and yeah very funny Simpsons is getting a bit old now, must be on the 40th season.

mkk

Brilliant!

(psst, mapple on youtube)

Anyone remember what actually killed off the iBook line of lighter macbooks? I can't quite recall.

Necrosis

All I can say is I bought an old G4 from work for $200.00. Wasn't great for anything really heavy but worked well. I wanted to get it on my network. It took as much research or more than finding a wireless card that would work w/ linux & way more than 64 MS OS's. I didn't want to pay the high premium for a card from Apple or a third party vendor. Never mind I still had to pay for the drivers to make the card work. Any way to make a long story short I didn't use it very much because the novelty wore off. To me it really did feel like I was using a tweaked linux install. Well since I never used it that much, entertained the idea of maybe getting a Mac mini to see if the experience would be different. I decided to give the G4 way to some one that could use it. It would still be great for an everyday use computer. Well low and behold I try to turn it on to get a few files off, and to just to some clean up to get it ready for the new user. It's totally dead, no nothing. Tried the instructions from the Apple forums (apparently this isn't a rare event) nothing. The funniest part is when I went to check on prices for a new PSU; lowest I could find was $350.00!! That was used!

I really don't see how they're innovating when you have an OS that has been around almost 10 years, plus using over priced PC hardware. It's not like they created the first MP3 player, or the first smart phone. Too many restrictions.

BlueMak

Well...to Apple's defence...what I have noticed is they are still acting like they are in the 80s. Back then it was normal to need specific made for your computer brand, upgrades to make them work properly. Similar to how today you need hardware/drivers that require WIndows PC, OSX etc, but way more fragmented. Apple seems to be stuck in the 80's in that respect. On the other hand, apart from PCs, all other computers have died, so, who knows, perhaps Apple's move isn't that stupid. (I believe it is).

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

dj_stick

the ibook line became the macbook line during the transition from PPC (iBook) to Intel (MacBook), same with Powerbook to Macbook Pro and Power Mac to Mac Pro

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macbiter

Actually this is wrong. OSX10 was released in 2001 and its based on UNIX (I dont count the server edition). It is actually quite different than UNIX which is used in the industry because Apple technicians recoded quite a few aspects of the operating system to make it more user friendly. Since then the code has been altered so much with updates over the years that its basically a different OS today within the kernel and other aspects. I fail to see how this is a "problem". Windows Vista uses quite a few aspects of the code in Windows 2000. I personally think Vista is great., which is why I use Parallells on my Macintosh (I do own skulltrail as well so im not a macintosh purist).

As for "overpriced" hardware, I think if you really analyse the prices, as Zardon did earlier on in this thread you will find they aren't quite as high as everyone makes out. I do accept that the ram prices are a little out of proportion with the rest of the market, however most Apple certified ram can be bought from people like Crucial for a fraction of the price.

I fail to understand the point you are making. Are you saying that Apple require you to use Specific Apple products to use with your computer? You are aware that USB drives etc work with Apple computers? so do most other things now unless the manufacturer fails to develop support. Also if Apple are stuck in the 80's with pure aluminium chassis and the most expensive designs such as LED screens, ambient controlled screens and keyboards... then I guess other makers must be stuck in the 60s with mostly plastic goods?

Also I doubt many of you know that Apple laptops have the lowest fail rate of any manufacturer. This isn't perhaps commonly known (but as I work for Apple I do have the documents here) so I guess we are doing something right when it comes to quality control.

I do however find these discussions rather pointless on forums because quite a lot of PC centric users have already made their minds up before any other points are made, even when Zardon made quite a few good points in this thread they are ignored. I do spend some time on Macintosh forums trying to educate Mac "purists" on windows as well, but ill quite happy use both.

As I said to Zardon in PM its just something we have to accept at the end of the day.

BlueMak

As you said you fail to understand a few things. Live and let live.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

macbiter

Well instead of patronising me, perhaps you could explain what you mean, because I use both OSX to code Javascript and use it for music, and I use vista via Skulltrail for other tasks. I would class myself pretty much as expert level on both.

If I understand the points you are making, rather than something vague like "apple are in the 80s" then I could understand where you are coming from.

WhO_KnOwS

I fail to see how the points some of you anti-mac users are making are even relevant to the news article.

Sure, Apple has moved to the Intel platform, making their computers essentially PCs in a different casing. But it is that casing that makes Apple innovators. Anyone who has used an Apple computer (be it a laptop or a desktop) for more than a few minutes will probably agree with me when I say that except for a few brands, the PC counterparts feel cheap, bulky and almost half-arsed. Mind my usage of the word feel, as I am not implying that their quality is worse.

And yes, most of the other Apple innovations of the past few years are cosmetic, but when you add them all up they make a huge difference. Capacitive screens for example weren't all that popular until Apple decided to put one on the iPhone. And guess what technology is used on that one-buttoned mouse called Mighty Mouse? You guessed it - capacitive touch recognition. Don't even get me started on the touchpads Apple uses - they are almost 3 times the size of a regular touch pad, they recognize multiple fingers at the same time and are far more precise than anything I have ever used on another laptop.

And that is just hardware. The software Apple develops might not be the most feature advanced suite available, but it certainly is the only suite that combines as many features without looking like a UNIX terminal. Which reminds me, WaltC, you said NeXT was a flop on Job's part? Last I checked, his work there is one of the major reasons OSX is what it is today.

Now, before I get flogged for being pro-mac, let me remind you that I am a pretty experienced PC user and that my liking of Apple's computers is not founded on ignorance or wanting to be part of the "elite". I simply like the well-rounded package Apple sells and the general quality of their products.

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humonous

Heh,

I always hated macintoshes. they always put looks before content.

My mate got one for christmas, a 24 inch imac and I went over to laugh at it. so I did.

I started using it so I could pick holes in it, and I love it - OSX is everything I want in an OS. the screen is beautiful, it seems to be much more responsive than vista with equivalent spec hardware.

Im away off to kill myself.

Alex

Its funny when I see Macintosh flaming because a lot of the comments used don't really apply to the Macintosh of today.

Would I buy one? no. I don't have that kind of disposal income. Would I like one? Sure. I don't think any manufacturer makes laptops that look or work as nice as a complete package. thats why you see them in tv shows and movies a lot. (although you get alienware making a good appearance as well).

My point?

I think they do a good job now, and the move to intel was wise really. Most of the comments I read are from users who dont use them anyway so its easy to mock something you never use. Its pack mentality and nothing new, happens across the board with everything.

if we start delving into histronics, anything is up for attack, lets be honest.