After reading all these posts, this is the one that makes the most sense to me right now. It seems that Apple is just beginning to enter the "living room" and shouldn't really be judged on past products or lost opportunities. After tomorrow the comparisons can begin.
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Gates on Apple's "huge disadvantage" in the living room
- Thread starter J Radical
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After reading all these posts, this is the one that makes the most sense to me right now. It seems that Apple is just beginning to enter the "living room" and shouldn't really be judged on past products or lost opportunities. After tomorrow the comparisons can begin.
Last I heard, this was still true.
An excellent point. While we dearly love our speculation around here, we'd do well to remember that it's just speculation, and also to remember that Bill Gates is where he is today partly due to his talent for spreading FUD, of which this is a prime example.
Anyone who thinks that Apple's products are so closed loop that they don't work with anything except Apple products, has never owned/experienced an Apple product. Period.
I know of one person who has an HP peecee, and an HP printer, and an HP HDTV screen, and an HP digital camera. In order to operate their printer, they had to download drivers, and call customer service to fix bugs. In order to get their peecee to recognize their printer, they had to install software, download drivers, and read many pages of text instructions. In the midst of all this plug and play fun, a virus corrupted their BIOS, and the system crashed. Will they have the same seamless integration between their HDTV screen and their peecee that they had with their other same brand periphery? I'll bet they do. How much of this scenario is because of HP, and how much is the fault of MS?
On the other side of the brain--- I bought a closeout model G3 iMac in the year 2000. I went to a big box store and bought a Kodak digital camera. (It did not say on the box that it would work with anything other than the Windows operating system, so I had no reason to believe that I should expect it to function with OSX.) I snapped some photos, removed the cameras CF memorycard, put that into a 5 dollar card reader, and plugged the card reader into the iMac's keyboard. A program that I had never used (called iPhoto) magically opened, and I was asked if I wanted to download my pictures. I clicked yes and all of my pictures were ready to use in ways that I was not aware of. I was storing, editing, emailing, printing, merging, boilerplating, and filing photos within a minute. No software needed to be loaded, no drivers to DL. I later bought a mini DV camcorder. Same story. I plugged the camera in using a cable that came with my iMac, and a program opened (iMovie) that asked me to press play. When I did, the camera began streaming video onto the computer with almost zero latency, and iMovie was organizing the video into frames based on when the rec/pause switch was toggled. Hey, it's not even a Genuine Apple Camcorder! My Epson printer, the 2 previous Lexmarks, and the one Canon before them all worked together as if they had been hand made by the same person. In reality, I was dragged kicking and screaming into the world of Apple, but I am still here (and anti-M$) because Apple makes the most useful, productive, and fun cool stuff in the universe. And it all works.
Explain to me how it is more expensive for me to have a system where everthing works when and how I need it to, versus something that may cost less to acquire, but wastes most of my time trying to get it to work (dL'ing drivers,debugging, loading on proprietary software, calling tech support, wasting days on chat rooms looking for answers, running into worms-viruses-malware, and equipment that locks down frequently). If MS made a car, would you drive it? What if they only made the engine, or the brakes, but someone else made the car? If market share is the only reason to buy any product, or the only indicator of a brands integrity, there would eventually be only one brand of everything.
And finally, why does it seem that most of the people who complain about Apple becoming a music monopoly with iTunes/iPod are windows fanboyz?
I know of one person who has an HP peecee, and an HP printer, and an HP HDTV screen, and an HP digital camera. In order to operate their printer, they had to download drivers, and call customer service to fix bugs. In order to get their peecee to recognize their printer, they had to install software, download drivers, and read many pages of text instructions. In the midst of all this plug and play fun, a virus corrupted their BIOS, and the system crashed. Will they have the same seamless integration between their HDTV screen and their peecee that they had with their other same brand periphery? I'll bet they do. How much of this scenario is because of HP, and how much is the fault of MS?
On the other side of the brain--- I bought a closeout model G3 iMac in the year 2000. I went to a big box store and bought a Kodak digital camera. (It did not say on the box that it would work with anything other than the Windows operating system, so I had no reason to believe that I should expect it to function with OSX.) I snapped some photos, removed the cameras CF memorycard, put that into a 5 dollar card reader, and plugged the card reader into the iMac's keyboard. A program that I had never used (called iPhoto) magically opened, and I was asked if I wanted to download my pictures. I clicked yes and all of my pictures were ready to use in ways that I was not aware of. I was storing, editing, emailing, printing, merging, boilerplating, and filing photos within a minute. No software needed to be loaded, no drivers to DL. I later bought a mini DV camcorder. Same story. I plugged the camera in using a cable that came with my iMac, and a program opened (iMovie) that asked me to press play. When I did, the camera began streaming video onto the computer with almost zero latency, and iMovie was organizing the video into frames based on when the rec/pause switch was toggled. Hey, it's not even a Genuine Apple Camcorder! My Epson printer, the 2 previous Lexmarks, and the one Canon before them all worked together as if they had been hand made by the same person. In reality, I was dragged kicking and screaming into the world of Apple, but I am still here (and anti-M$) because Apple makes the most useful, productive, and fun cool stuff in the universe. And it all works.
Explain to me how it is more expensive for me to have a system where everthing works when and how I need it to, versus something that may cost less to acquire, but wastes most of my time trying to get it to work (dL'ing drivers,debugging, loading on proprietary software, calling tech support, wasting days on chat rooms looking for answers, running into worms-viruses-malware, and equipment that locks down frequently). If MS made a car, would you drive it? What if they only made the engine, or the brakes, but someone else made the car? If market share is the only reason to buy any product, or the only indicator of a brands integrity, there would eventually be only one brand of everything.
And finally, why does it seem that most of the people who complain about Apple becoming a music monopoly with iTunes/iPod are windows fanboyz?
Ur analysis is so typical, if u think ppl making comments about apple when "they didn't own a apple product" is weird, how long did u use windows and pc for you to make such comments?
Its eventually the difference of ideas, apple believes in making everything itself and control the quality, while M$ is doing it with maximum 3rd part hardware compatibility, if you already fail to understand concept, plz go back and read OP's link.
I watched Bill Gates speech at CES and I think that Microsoft's vision is pretty creepy. I want choice but I don't want Window/Microsoft or OSX/Apple to run my life. I don't want everything I own to be controlled by one controller. Then again, I also don't need/want to be constantly entertained so maybe I'm not part of the target audience.
I can't speak for Cheese, but I can say that having used Windows for 10 years (3.11, 95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, NT, XP Home and Pro, and Vista a little) and been a service tech for over 3, I can say that I agree with everything in his post right down to the final word. I've been using a Mac for almost 2 years and I've since sold all of my PC's and switched 5 people. Never would I ever buy a PC again in my life, I know them well. Too well.
By the way, clevin, I could watch your 'tar for days.
But this concept is fundamentally wrong.
Apple doesn't make printers or scanners or digital cameras or video cameras, yet these devices work out of the box on most Macs.
Apple doesn't make any voice recorders/microphones/card readers for the iPod, yet it supports others who do in the device's firmware.
This is not the picture of a closed ecosystem that believes in "making everything itself". Control yes, but interoperability, yes too.
B
By the way, clevin, I could watch your 'tar for days.
glad i can make your day,
i was busy earlier, so didn't follow here. Im not against apple, and Im anti-M$, its just these words of "Godly apple" really makes me sick, its not like apple invented everything and OSX is perfect. lol
What the **** are you referring to exactly? The computers? The OS? Apple doesn't make anything but the Computers, the OS, and one very popular MP3 player.
How does Microsoft make Windows any more able to be compatible with third party hardware than Mac OS X?
Well, it's pretty darn close. Go read folklore.org.
think about it, ppl are free to assemble their computers with their own choice of mainboard, cpu, dvd drive harddisk, operating system, graphic card, monitor, u know your examples are limited, and doesn't really get inside the computer.
Why don't you answer the question. Oh, and I inserted those asterisks myself, to replace "hell" which isn't bleeped out automatically for some reason (as demonstrated above).
And your fanboy remarks really don't make any sense in this context. Why don't you just address the questioning of your ridiculous statement instead of focusing on what word I use to emphasize my disagreement?
You are free to do this, nobody is forcing you to buy an Apple.
Yes, but what most users do with their machines is also limited. How many PC users have actually ever opened the case?
I've had 15 years of "getting inside" my computers and I'm done. I can't count the number of hours I spent over the past fifteen years dealing with driver incompatibilities and other SNAFUs of "upgrading" windows boxes. [I actually came to this conclusion before my return to the Mac, and decided I would just buy a Dell rather that build my own PC for the umpteenth time and have more time to spend with my real kids than a putative kid that runs Windows.]
That's not to say that things don't go wrong from time to time on a Mac, but the MTTF (mean time to frustration) is a lot less since I've added Macs to my mix of boxes.
B
In the old days, an internet debate could be reliably short-circuited by calling one of the debaters a Nazi. Now, the same thing is done by calling them a "fanboy."
Just look at how far we've come.
Just look at how far we've come.
Well, it's not blocked because "Hell" is not an offensive word.
But yes, clevin is incredibly annoying. Half his posts are incoherent and the other half are wrong.
Let me get this straight. The "convicted" abusive monopoly is suggesting that their only software side competitor is limiting choices?
Imagine where we might be if there were real competition in operating systems. Then imagine where we would be if there were no Apple and we had to rely on MS for innovation without outside pressure. As an example how diligently did MS improve Powerpoint before Apples Keynote highlighted it's inadequacies.
I suspect that the initial synopsis is inaccurate or Bill's statements are somewhat self serving, I believe he's too smart to actually believe that Apple is the one limiting choices.
The only thing that makes sense to me in what he is saying is that Apple is going to be just one choice of many for specific home entertainment solutions making it harder for them to hit an ipod home run with hardware. What he is ignoring is that all of the other suppliers will be limited to one choice in software solutions because MS has such a stranglehold on that part of the solution. Would it then be surprising if Apple is the one to provide the more elegant software side solution considering they're only competing with MS.
Take for example the portable music player market.
Microsoft will provide everyone with their PlayForSure software (funny name, has nothing to do with reality). Everyone will of course try not to upset Microsoft, which is why nobody dared using AAC capabilities in their players. And what happens? Microsoft turns around and f***s everyone with their Zune player, which is the first player other than iPod that supports AAC. That's how it goes, Microsoft will f*** everyone who trusts them.
You and me both.
People are also free not to do so. I do like the interchangeability of current hardware but by the time it gets to buying a new Apple, I might as well buy a new one instead of changing the motherboard.
Maybe you shouldn't think of the computer as merely a collection of parts, but a computing appliance like a PDA or cellphone. When was the last time you could change the parts in those? And laptops fit in the "appliance" category as well. Not much interchangeability there. People aren't buying desktops these days either ...
And I for one am happier not having to tweak all the time. When I want to work, I can get it done, and when I want to tweak, I can do it too. And to open standards.
Apple is only limiting if it doesn't work with what's out there as a standard. I expect what works in Quicktime to work in Apple's living room products. That includes all those pesky avi files.
Touch screen? Do you think I will let anyone touch the screen of my TV?
I'd say that Bill Gates is afraid. Very afraid.
You have to license AAC from parties other than Microsoft. Many other players apart from the iPod plays AAC - a great deal of mobile phones for a start, since it was developed for mobile telephony devices. Sony MP3 players plays AAC. Whether a device plays AAC is entirely up to the maker. They might have seen it as a futile effort as many people who bought the geekier multi-codec players did so because they wanted nothing to do with the iPod, including (foolishly for them) the codec it supports. I believe Sony was the first major-label, known MP3 maker to break that prejudice of sorts in mass-market devices.
I suspect that Microsoft ran out of patience looking at the also-rans that the other manufacturers & Playsforsure licensees churned out. In many cases the Playsforsure code wouldn't work reliably in these players due to issues with the player itself as well as issues with the Playsforsure delivery services. Whethe this was a Microsoft problem or a vendor problem, I couldn't say. I certainly came across these problems often. The biggest pointer to a potential exasperation with the existing manufacturers is probably the gradual drift away from the Playsforsure music vendors before news of the Zune broke, and the iRiver partnership with M$ which started off promisingly enough... but eventually M$ turned to Toshiba to make the Zune (and that has to be for firmware reasons as much as hardware).
If that was actually the case, it's quite possible that Microsoft actually decided to say '&%$# you, we're going to make something that actually works almost all the time like the iPod and the rest of you're not going to screw it for us anymore'. Rather like Steve casting off the clone-makers perhaps. As I said it's speculation but the pointers are there.
I have been using PeeCee's from the very beginning. Ran MSDOS on a Tandy 2000, had a 486sx33 - Win3.11, the whole progression, and I am forced to use several versions of windows at my current job (95, XP, NT). AS for M$ doing it, They are doing it to everyone, and not with anyone -- except their corporate whore du jour. I am so bored with hearing people tell me about maximum 3rd party compatibility. Most of the 3rd party windoze stuff I have tried to run was an utter, utter, utter failure. I would rather have 15 apps that work absolutely, and do more than I need than an absolute ocean full of rotting carp apps that bloat my already bloated winOS and crash my system on a regular basis. The difference of ideas comes from Apple who has an idea that if they build systems and products that work, then they have made the world a better way to think, versus M$ which has a plan to brainwash people into thinking that their promise of interoperability will someday be delivered, while the consumers money smolders in Gates' pocket, and the M$OS is Frying CPU's on a global scale. If it were any other company, or product, they would be given a 50DKP minus... AGAIN!!
I dont see why Apple would have a disadvantage in the Living room, I'm not sure if any of you have ever used MediaCenter, but it's interface is horrible. Personally though I dont see iTV as a competitor to MediaCenter.
It is most likely that iTV will be a flash booting device, I think it will actually have a sizeable amount of flash and that on that flash memory there will be a Darwin Based operating system using the same codebase as Leopard, but the Mac Desktop will be replaced with a consumer style interface.
Compare this to MediaCenter, which is just WindowsXP but with the MC Application front end running on top, besides this front end there is no difference whatsoever between the software on Windows MCE and Windows XP. This means that MediaCenter is subject to every flaw that Windows itself is subject to, i.e. viruses, faulty software (installed by user or by malicious means), poor quality device drivers. The only reason so many media center PC's are out there today is that they are sold as PC's, not as living room appliances, you can tell this by the form factor that most of these devices adopt.
So there is significant room for Apple to do something different here, something better, something more reliable, something the consumer can not break as a result of using the device like a computer.
So what do I think iTV will be, I think iTV will:
* Have a Darwin based software core and hence inherit abilities direct from OSX and share development effort
* Simple clean GUI, a la iPod, but different to anything currently displayed by Apple - it wont look like a PC, unlike M$MCE
* Boot from Flash or solid state, not disk. (Fast booting, tamper prevention to reduce risk of virus infection, solve software problems with hard reset)
* No internal storage
* Support for accessing files from a network device, so you can use a PC, Mac or possibly a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device to store your content
* Apple could seperately introduce a NAS device or combine storage with a new airport extreme product
* Possibly the ability to record to the network storage on Mac, PC or NAS.
* Software on the unit will not be customisable any more than it is on iPod, i.e. only apple developed software additions or software from approved 3rd parties.
* iTunes could be extended to manage a NAS device, perhaps to automatically discover
What will it do:
* Play Media and show photo collections from one or more computers or network storage locations
* Possibly record media (video), the more I think abot this the more unlikely I think this will be as Apple would need to devise some method of controlling TV receivers like cable and satellite decoders and also download program information
* Allow you to organise your media in to playlists
* Not much else I can predict, but maybe they will come up with some other use for it I haven't thought of
It is most likely that iTV will be a flash booting device, I think it will actually have a sizeable amount of flash and that on that flash memory there will be a Darwin Based operating system using the same codebase as Leopard, but the Mac Desktop will be replaced with a consumer style interface.
Compare this to MediaCenter, which is just WindowsXP but with the MC Application front end running on top, besides this front end there is no difference whatsoever between the software on Windows MCE and Windows XP. This means that MediaCenter is subject to every flaw that Windows itself is subject to, i.e. viruses, faulty software (installed by user or by malicious means), poor quality device drivers. The only reason so many media center PC's are out there today is that they are sold as PC's, not as living room appliances, you can tell this by the form factor that most of these devices adopt.
So there is significant room for Apple to do something different here, something better, something more reliable, something the consumer can not break as a result of using the device like a computer.
So what do I think iTV will be, I think iTV will:
* Have a Darwin based software core and hence inherit abilities direct from OSX and share development effort
* Simple clean GUI, a la iPod, but different to anything currently displayed by Apple - it wont look like a PC, unlike M$MCE
* Boot from Flash or solid state, not disk. (Fast booting, tamper prevention to reduce risk of virus infection, solve software problems with hard reset)
* No internal storage
* Support for accessing files from a network device, so you can use a PC, Mac or possibly a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device to store your content
* Apple could seperately introduce a NAS device or combine storage with a new airport extreme product
* Possibly the ability to record to the network storage on Mac, PC or NAS.
* Software on the unit will not be customisable any more than it is on iPod, i.e. only apple developed software additions or software from approved 3rd parties.
* iTunes could be extended to manage a NAS device, perhaps to automatically discover
What will it do:
* Play Media and show photo collections from one or more computers or network storage locations
* Possibly record media (video), the more I think abot this the more unlikely I think this will be as Apple would need to devise some method of controlling TV receivers like cable and satellite decoders and also download program information
* Allow you to organise your media in to playlists
* Not much else I can predict, but maybe they will come up with some other use for it I haven't thought of
I think that Apple's tight software/hardware integration and attractive design will give it an advantage in the livingroom.