A couple of MIT undergrads were over here at the house yesterday. These technology connoisseurs said that the stagnation of features available in Windows will drive consumers to buying Macintosh computers, especially laptops. Apple is apparently on a roll with new OS features including a disconnected and resync-able file system scheduled to ship in 2005 (didn’t Carnegie Mellon do this with Andrew File System many years ago?). I compared their prediction to the high-end audio nerd’s belief that CDs would be supplanted by a digital format with superior sound quality.
In the audio market the connoisseurs were mostly wrong. There are two competing high quality digital music formats, SACD and DVD-A. Together there are fewer than 1000 titles available in these formats, more than two years after their release, and you can’t find these in most record stores. By contrast the mass market has embraced digital music formats that are lower quality than CD: MP3, XM Radio, Sirius Radio (the satellite radios put out about 64 Kbits/channel and are noticeably inferior to a regular FM station, even on a fairly cheap set of speakers).
Suppose that Microsoft never adds another feature to Windows? Not even my personal pet desire, the ability to display and lightly manipulate camera raw format images that come from high quality digital cameras. Would that drive consumers to buy Macintosh? Not if the computer market turns out to be like the audio market where people said “CD quality is more than good enough; I just want music that is more convenient and/or cheaper”. People would say “Windows XP Home is good enough but let’s get it for as little as possible”. The result will be a $350 laptop at Walmart. I met a senior Dell engineer recently and he told me that Dell was already producing a laptop on which they could cut the price to $500, without downgrading any components, and still make a profit. The cheapest Macintosh laptop, by contrast, is $1100.
People who stopped buying CDs now spend their home entertainment budget on fancy digital cable. If Microsoft’s feature stagnation leads to a big drop in the average price of a purchased PC who will pick up the dollars not spent? My prediction is mobile phone makers and carriers. I saw a billboard yesterday for a Nextel phone with built-in GPS and voice-prompt navigation. That seems more useful to most people than whatever OS tweaks Apple and Microsoft might offer to their 1970s-style mouse-windows-keyword systems.
Just because everyone seems to be shopping at Walmart doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for Macy’s.
In terms of IT as a whole – I think Carr has it right – IT Doesn’t Matter http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/articles/matter.html.
Carr’s point is not that IT doesn’t matter, but it has become a commodity like electricity.
Apple is going to have a disconnected re-syncable file system ? That’s news to me. I think what you’re talking about already happens with .Mac/iDisk in 10.3; maybe that’s just getting generalized to WebDAV access in Tiger, because there appears to be no mention of this in Apple’s preview.
Ironically, while .Net is impressive and is in a lot of ways is the right thing in very broad terms — that there is almost no reason for the average application developer to do memory management, and be forced to use Java or Basic if he doesn’t — it might have just come too late to the party in terms of a reason to switch or upgrade. (I’m an ex-Lisp hacker and want to see a diversity of GC’ed languages that can share classes in a simple way.) We’ll have to see if MS’s vaunted developer support will produce a “managed” runtime that is actually used more on the desktop than Java is, along with the killer apps that would result from freeing most developers from the drudgery and danger in programming in C-like languages. Otherwise, ho-hum.
Apple’s in an interesting place. Each revision of OS X contains worthwhile innovations that aren’t sexy (like a real implementation of ZeroConf or support for LDAP), but there is always something enticing for the user, whether it’s eye candy or the promise of system-wide search in Tiger. I don’t think this kind of thing will set off a stampede from Windows, although it HAS to bug MS that Apple is crowing about Spotlight when MS is feeling that are doing WinFS the hard/right way, and thus “should” delay it until, oh 2007 or so.
Walmart has an online $598 laptop price loaded with a 14.1-inch display, an AMD Athlon XP 1600+ processor, 128MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, a DVD-drive, Wi-Fi 802.11b and Microsoft’s Windows XP Home Edition operating system. No discounts or mail-in rebates are needed to get that net price. Can $500 be far off?
No one is upgrading anyway. Most people (non-tech normal folk) I run into are still running Windows 98, and in some cases Windows 95, that came with the machine when they purchased it. These same people that aren’t buying XP now, are the same people that aren’t going to be buying OS X in the future. They’ll plop down $500 and buy whatever the cheapest computer is they can buy at Wal Mart/Best Buy/Fry’s. I’ll stake my left manly unit on the fact that in the next five years, Apple will not be selling a fully loaded machine able to compete with the generic wintel boxes out there in any kind of retail store bar their own. Even in their own stores, I wouldn’t count on anything near the $500 point. Port OS X to Intel and sell it on cheap but ever powerful AMD 64 boxes and you’ve got yourself some real MS competition.
The problem with Apple is that you’re paying a huge premium for pretty lame extras, and a much better-looking machine. You look really hip with a gleaming PowerBook, but it costs twice as much as a similarly optioned WinTel machine. The same is true for their DeskTops: The newest iMac is about twice as much as a similar PC (or more), but looks about 10x cooler. Aside from yuppies, few people will pay such a huge premium for a “cool” “Sex and the City” -wannabe type computer.
If you compare similar computer specs, you’ll find that the iMac is priced competitively with PCs from Dell, for example. Where Apple leaves the consumer hanging is in the low-priced computer arena.
Ref: “are noticeably inferior to a regular FM station, even on a fairly cheap set of speakers”.
A bold statement. I just test-drove a Chevy pickup, with a Chevy [XM] radio. Awesome. Far superior to FM. And of course XM (etc) has the benefit of middle-of-nowhere reception and commercial-free music choice.
At the university computer labs here they have a room full of G5s that are mostly ignored in favor of the Windows XP machines in the next room by students who don’t have to pay the Mac premium. They don’t really give a rats ass about the nicer environment and extra features that a Mac offers, and wouldn’t want to take out 15 minutes to learn the different UI. If they can’t be bothered to use a Mac when it’s free, would you expect them to pay extra $$ for one?
I personally prefer the Macs, but I’m a geek who actually cares what system I’m using. And even I couldn’t justify spending the extra money on one.
Style counts. Neither XP nor OSX are going to sell more boxes, but the vendor with the next big thing in case design/materials is going to drive a lot of sales. Look at the iMac. It’s a computer. It gets lots of press about how it LOOKS.
I see the future of peecees as collaborations among design houses and component manufacturers.
Paul: The difference between 64 Kbit/second digital (XM) and FM radio (15 KHz analog with around 70 dB S/N ratio) is not a subtle one. FM radio is considered by many audiophiles to be superior to CD (1.4 Mbits/second digital, albeit coded inefficiently) and CD is obviously superior to the compressed derivatives that are ripped from CDs. If you had an extremely repetitive signal (maybe a Madonna song?) it is possible that 64 Kbits would be more accurate than the FM radio channel. But you won’t find too many classical music audio nerds tossing out their FM radios in favor of 64 Kbit MP3 streams.
Of course with that Chevy Pickup (genuine Bose stereo?) and Madonna playing over XM Radio you could probably attract a lot more young blondes than with a regular car or minivan and an FM radio tuned to the local NPR station playing Bartok or Stravinsky…
Almost all (non-live) FM programming is played from CD or a computer automation system using digital compression — the three small-market rock music stations for which I’m the chief engineer use MPEG Layer 2 at 256 kb/s for the music cuts. Our digital satellite feeds (morning shows, etc.) use even lower bitrates.
I can hear the compression artifacts on the air, but when advertisers supply their commercial announcements as 64 kb/s MP3 files attached to e-mail, it’s hard to see them caring, and I don’t see how the listeners would know the difference, either — how many of them have actually heard the CD vs. an MP3 download?
Even with a pristine studio signal, you still have multipath and the nasty, nasty effects of the hypercompression management insists I enable in the processors (“LOUD-HOT+BASS”) to give the “loudest” signal possible while maintaining the FCC-required 75 kHz deviation. (I’ve watched our modulation meter sit at 100% for fifteen minutes straight — if there ever was any dynamic range in the music, it’s gone by the time we get it on the air.)
Perhaps your classical station is different; I, for one, wish we could have live orchestras in the studio again…
Regarding the .NET reference above, I couldn’t help remembering one of the things that Phil wrote in “Phil and Alex’s guide to web publishing”: “The original LISP Machine was amazing. It had things that, if we’re lucky, will be announced as innovations by Microsoft in 2005…”.
Well, we’re now almost in 2005, and what’s the Next Big Thing proposed by Microsoft for the future of software development? .NET. Managed memory. Garbage collection. No more buffer overflows.
Dell *could* cut the price of a laptop for $500, but they don’t. Apple sells one for $1100. This is a fair comparison? What’s the actual current price of that laptop? What could Apple cut its price to?
Without any of the special deals that a lot of folks use to save money on Dell machines, the cheapest laptop is $719 and comes with a 14-inch screen, 256 MB of RAM, 30 GB of disk, a CD-writer, and a 2.2 GHz CPU.
An Apple laptop with a 14-inch screen and 256 MB of RAM is $1300. The Apple is slightly better than the Dell in a couple of ways, e.g., with a 40 GB drive instead of 30. Dell gives you a free wireless card and the Apple probably has it built in. Hard to say how Apple’s 1 GHz CPU compares to the 2.2 GHz CPU in the Dell.
If you go to http://www.gotapex.com/ today they tell you how to get a Dell laptop with a 15″ screen and 3 GHz CPU for $876 by using a 15%-off coupon.
It still surprises me that there aren’t laptops with 12″ displays selling for under $500.
I’ve had a Dell, and now have owned a PB for near 18 mo. and there is no comparison. On price, the Dell was a bit cheaper, but it was a gimped one in terms of memory (128M). The Apple has a DVD burner and CD writer, something I didn’t have with the Dell.
In terms of software, Apple comes with iLife and ability out of the box to run any GPL/*nix GNU software, the Dell was gimped, not that I couldn’t run it, but company issued laptop denied admin access to box and I got in big trouble too for installing dual boot Red Hat.
Having native UNIX terminals and environment blows away Exceed and/or Cygwin setup.
Mac OS X is best of both worlds – being able to go low level and use power tools Perl, python, C, apache, etc… vs. Windows where I have to be concerned with adware, spyware, viruses, etc… …it’s not even a fair comparison – yet, there still are nifty GUI apps that for most users, wouldn’t ever have to get their fingers dirty and could enjoy full performance from just the GUI offerings.
I came lat to this post, but I will say this. I’m a Java developer who taught himself C#. But since most of my money is made slinging Java still, I’ve been trying to find a reason to buy a Macintosh because they look so sexy and Java is near-enough a first class language on OSX. So when I got near a Mac to scratch that itch it was the $3500 massive 17″ laptop with a 1.3 GhZ G4. Running a test harness from the system I had been working on over past several months which had 15,000 tests in it took that laptop almost 4000 seconds to run. My 2-year-old 2GhZ P4 laptop (which was $1700 new) ran the same test harness in a little over 1000 seconds. The latest el-cheapo 3.0 GhZ machines in the lab at the company I was working at ran that harness in about 600 seconds.
Macs are slow and they are expensive. But maybe that will change now that IBM is taking over with the G5 where Motorola left off with the G4.
I agree with Phil. I am a photo freak. I have two digital cameras and six film cameras. I scan and upload my photos into a hard drive that serves the same purpose as the shoe boxes in the closet.
I am also an audio freak. I love my SACD setup. But I haven’t bought a CD/DVD/SACD for more than a year.
Fancy technology is not necessarily useful technology. Very few have the time or money for the fancy stuff these days.
I am also a Walmart stock-holder.
First of all, you cannot compare an alledged Dell laptop to an actual laptop selling in the stores. By that measure, I could announce a $99 Windows XP tablet PC tomorrow but could I produce it?
There are already $499 laptops – whether you’re willing to test out their relaibility with your money is another matter.
If you’ll notice, Dell is king of the bait and switch – yes, they ahve machines selling for $500 but how far will you get without a monitor and 128 of RAM? Do, by the time you add it up to get a minimal machine by today’s standards (isn’t it worth $79 to go from a 20GB to a 40GB HDD?), you’re pretty much at $1,200 – try it yourself. That will be the same with a Dell laptop. It might start at $499 but you want 128 of RAM or 512? 10GB HDD or 40GB? You want 1024 or 1280? After all is said and done, you’re at $1,200 – surprise.
So, while we love to hear that we can get a $1,500 laptop for $500 tomorrow – we shouldn’t just presume that someone (dell or otherwise) is telling us the truth – otherwise, we’d be all be Longhorn right now.
The real difference is that Apple insists on making things that work. AFS was a proof of concept, but it never became actually usable for me under Linux.
I’m looking forward to switching from Linux to MacOS on my laptop. I’m simply too tired of managing everything by hand (hotplug USB, anyone?). I just want machines that work reliably and that don’t require me to spend my time managing them.
This is such a lame argument. The original contention was that the lack of new features in Windows will either drive people to buying Macintosh computers or drive people to buying bargain basement WalMart computers since this stagnation will force a reduction in PC Prices.
First of all, the outcome is not mutually exclusive. People have been buying more Macs. People have been buying more PCs.
Second of all, the lack of features in Microsoft Windows does not necessarily lead to a lower price for Windows nor does it lead to lower sales for Windows. If anything, people still buy Windows because the hardware prices keeps getting lower and more affordable. Windows still costs the same. People are forced to buy it with their computers because it is the “Standard”. If you want to play computer games, for example, you have to buy Windows. Linux has nearly zero games. The Mac version of computer games generally come out up to a year later than the PC version.
Third, Microsoft is increasing their sales by REMOVING features from Windows. Windows XP Pro should be the standard operating system. But Microsoft removed features such as networking in order to sell a lower priced model – Windows XP Home Edition. And sales are much higher as a result. For third world countries, Microsoft is now removing even more features, to sell a lower cost model of Windows, leading to even higher sales. Of course, this is all a great bait and switch in the grand scheme of things since eventually, people may need to UPGRADE to a fuller version model of Windows. And again, Microsoft will pick up the profit.
Fourth, people who buy Macintoshes generally are not people who buy low-priced PCs. They want high quality products, which are reliable, which are easy to use, which allow you to be more productive since you don’t have to service your computer so much (to keep up with multitudes of patches for bugs in the OS, to stop infections from the hundreds of thousands of PC viruses, etc.). If Mac buyers were to purchase a PC, it would be a high-end PC, not a low-priced model. They would purchase BMWs not Yugos. If forced to, they would buy Cadillacs, not Chevys.