I mean, come on! You guys invented the PDA (and some how managed to screw that up)! Towards the end of it’s life the Newton was Obviously going in that direction.
Although I solely use PC’s I have no problem admitting that Apple is the reigning god-king of product design. Everything you guys make is pretty and easy to use, and that is all that is needed with a tablet PC! A tablet PC does not have any radical new hardware, it is all about repackaging existing hardware into an innovative new product.
I have no doubt that you guys could be the ones to really pull it off. It could be the Ipod. But if you wait, Microsoft will eventually get it right and you will be shut out of another market.
But I can see why they would not release their own version , they are already two years behind , if they release their own.
Bout the only thing they should do , but would probably kill their hardware side , is to finally port 0SX over to intel/amd, that is if they are legally able to. I am not sure what apple promised to Microsoft for bailing em out , a couple of years ago.
I point on the new iMac; the office in my building all has these HP models that tuck the entire computer into a few vertical inches, much like the iMac. So why is the iMac, which is coming out later than the HP, all that revolutionary and interesting.
What I can’t work out is - doesn’t a decent office design place all computer etc blah out of the way? Where cables won’t get accidently knocked out? How can the new Mac be better than a TFT screen for office use?
PC users are perfectly happy with their beige boxes tucked under their desks. It really doesn’t matter how ‘cool’ and ‘sleek’ the machine itself looks - that is totally superficial. What matters is the power and versatility, and the iMac is rather too limiting in that respect, I think. Still.
Microsoft DID NOT bail Apple out a couple years ago. Microsoft bought $150 million in non-voting shares, that’s all. At the time they did this, Apple had over $2 billion in the bank. Apple was never in serious danger of going under.
I don’t want Apple to make a tablet computer. Because if they do, I will buy it instantly, and it will be extremely expensive, and then I’ll get all obsessed with it, and I’ll never be able to go out without having it with me, and that means I’ll have to become one of those guys who carries around a man-purse. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
I’m having enough problems dealing with the separation anxiety when I have to leave my Powerbook at home. It’s so… silver… and the keyboard is so… supple, yet firm, responding to my touch with the…
I never imagined, when an unsupposing man named Sol came to purchase me, that we’d discover so many of my hidden functions. A CD drive just isn’t used like that in Basic (or even Java) training…
Other than the fact that I don’t have any software for Mac, the other reason I haven’t bought something like an iMac or a G5 is that I want to be able to upgrade it. There is no freaking room to get in there and work to add or a replace a drive, much less pull the motherboard or change the processor.
Well, count me as one person who thinks that new iMac looks pretty bland and boring. It also looks rather unstable on that narrow stand, although i’m sure they’ve ensured that it’s fine.
I really don’t forsee Apple making an iTablet anytime soon (as much as I’d like to own one). In fact, I did a Google search not too long ago to see if I could find any information about the possibility of them making one and found an interview with Steve Jobs saying outright that there were no plans for one and that furthermore, he didn’t see the point in developing one. Of course, there’re also a lot of sites claiming that Apple employees in the know have stated that there’s at least some work being done on a Mac tablet. So, who knows?
Where the fuck do you work that you get to have a ‘decent office design’? I’ve been molested and abused by desks and workstations for the past decade. Hell, the work area at my last company supposedly won design awards. I can only conclude that the individuals who hand out these awards do not actually possess common human accoutrements, like, say, forearms, that would interfere with the proper use of said desk.
asterion, if you’re thinking of replacing a motherboard, or processor, a Mac is pretty much not for you. Of course, the only mods I’ve ever made to a Mac are upgrading RAM, so I rarely crack the case (and plugging it into my TV, VCR, and stereo don’t count as mods with a Mac). That, and it pretty much came with all the software I ever need…
Eh? Maybe it depends on the model, but upgrading the CPU (and the video card, and augmenting/replacing hard and DVD drives) on my old G4 was pretty easy.
(A Mac Mini looks like it’d be a total bitch to work on, though.)
Say, did anyone read the book “The Cult of Mac”? There was a guy who’d converted an iBook into a “tablet” by removing the keyboard, reattaching the screen, and grafting on some kind of stylus sensors over the screen. (He had a little trouble with the handwriting recognition, as I remember…like it only worked under OS X, but the sensor drivers only worked in classic, or something. I forget the details.)
Some wild stuff in that book. A few people had even upgraded Fat Macs into PowerPCs.
For what it’s worth, I expect the mac will vanish sooner or later. It’s simply losing most of the advantages it ever had, piece by piece. It may take a decade, but apple already has the foundation for switching to non-computer items, lile MP3 players and so on.
I don’t think Macs are the perfect computer, but I’d like to own one to fiddle around with when I get money. There are things I’d like to see changed, but I think there are a lot more annoying things with Windows, so it evens out.
Actually, the hyper-coolness of the iPod is rubbing off on its other products - Macs are apparently gaining product share at the moment. There’s no reason why the market for desktop computers has to result in an eventual winner, and in fact as everything’s becoming more and more web-based, I think there’s getting to be less reason why everyone should move to the same system.
I think where Apple might lose out in the future is that they don’t seem to be positioning themselves as the home entertainment centre hub in quite the same way Microsoft is pushing Windows, but then it’s far from certain that the desktop computer will ever quite turn in to that. Having played around with early media server products, though, I do think it’s pretty likely - the potential coolness is vast even if the current offerings are pretty clunky, and I think Apple are missing out a bit, iPod notwithstanding.
As for the patent for the tablet design, is it just me or is that the single most useless bit of patentry ever? They lay claim to the “incidental design”, then illustrate a design entirely without ornament. I realise this is an Apple design philosophy, but they can’t patent simplicity, can they? What on earth is original about that?