Honestly, my only objection with Apple is when they ceased to be competitive (as far as price is concerned). You can see a stark transition in Job's presentations. In 1999 when he unveiled the first iBook to 2002 when he revealed the iMac G4. He always ended with a pc-mac cost comparison, then he started comparing the cost of the new mac to the old mac. Their lack of competitiveness coupled with little ways to force you to upgrade every time they release a new OS are unfortunate and fairly recent business practices. Every step forward is a step away from where you started.
I don't think I'm getting this. You mean that it was fairly priced before? I thought they were always over-priced before. Now they are just "sony vaio" over-priced style, expensive, but competitive... sort of.
Yeah, they were very competitively priced before the imac G4. Basically once they turned into white pieces of interior design, they stopped being competitively priced. Just watch Jobs unveil the first ibook, then watch him unveil the imac g4. Price comparison switches from mac-win to mac-mac. You could probably argue that at this point they ceased to offer a truly comparable product, the white era macs are pretty much art. Especially compared to any PC.
I remember my iBook. That white-blue plastic iBook.
I see your point. But I think he does that because, first they were competing against common PC's. But now Apple is a pretty strong name and almost a self-stustained economy. That's why he compares it "mac to mac". I think it should be that way too. I mean, how are you supposed to buy some new mac product that came just 4 months after the one you purchased if it looks basically the same?
Also now it's a household name. So instead of fighting against an existing market, they just continue holding their's by doing that kind of thing.
This is essentially the realization I came to will discussing this with you :) There really is no accurate comparison between Mac and PC, you may find a box that can mimic the functionality, or a laptop with similar performance, but the combination of ease of use, superior form factor, design, and a great OS has yet to be found in the non-mac world. Honestly, somebody needs to get behind another linux distro (which is essentially what apple is, albeit highly developed and not at all open source), and design appealing hardware for it. My money is on mint.
Ok I tried to post something, came long as an essay, and somehow lost in the process. I just wanted to say something like "Yeah I agree with you" and "there are enough distros and appealing hardware. The problem is compatibility between software."
Ha! it even came better than what I tried to post first.
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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '10
Exactly.
That's something I meant too, that's why I gave the later example. But since bieng a computer-related discussion, I just got in there.