Jobs Ramblings of Mine

alternateorg on August 24, 2003

Recently, on Daring Fireball, I read

[Steve Jobs’s] strengths are obvious. Since his return as CEO in 1997, Apple’s computers have gotten better (and better looking), their product line has been simplified, their software has gotten better, and the company has successfully entered new markets.

While I agree with this statement, I gotta admit that (as a crazy Mac user), I’ve become a little interested in the “product line has been simplified” comment. In 1998, this was certainly true, even before the iBooks came out. You had Powerbooks in 3 different speed configurations (all called Powerbook G3), iMacs in one configuration to simplify the buying process, and PowerMacs in (I believe) 3 speed configurations, and correct me if I’m wrong, but at some point I believe they mirrored those available in the Powerbooks. That’s it. No iPods, no eMacs, no speakers, no iSight, no software other than the OS and what we bundled with it (this may be incorrect, also). You had basically 3 product lines, in simple configurations.

And we all know that this saved Apple from their previous stance of having very, very similar product names applied to different products. Aside from Tai, can anyone tell me the exact system-level differences between a 6400, 6500, 7200,7500, 8400, 8500 and a 9500? All with random numbers and a slash after their names? Was my friend’s 7500/200 really that much better than my 6400/180? The answer is yes, but I couldn’t tell you why, then or now.

Now, Apple has a multitude of lines that don’t fit into the power user desktop/portable, consumer user desktop/portable line up. What’s the main difference besides form factor between an iMac and an eMac? A 1st generation iPod at 10gb and a 3rd generation iPod at 10gb?

I guess my question is… is Apple perhaps too diverse these days? I understand the reasons behind the financial need to branch out into the videoconferencing and music player/PDA-ish markets, but is it going to cause problems down the road when Apple isn’t known as a computer maker, but an all-inclusive experience-maker?

And too a lesser degree, this:Is the fact that Apple makes the best peripherals for their OS and hardware going to drive them back into their well-known tendency toward proprietary connections and protocols (AppleTalk, ADB, vs TCP/IP, USB, etc)? If so, that’s almost definitely a bad thing. You already need a DVI adapter to use a new Cinema Display on a computer without ADC. Now, admittedly, they include this adapter with the display, but the fact remains that it runs on a proprietary connection.

Thoughts? Am I just being one of the many, many armchair analysts on the internet that seem to focus solely on Microsoft and Apple? Should I chill out and watch a movie instead?

BuyMusic Problems

alternateorg on July 30, 2003

It’s the user, stupid. For those of you who haven’t used the iTunes Music Store, let’s just say that Apple’s user experience far exceeds that described above. She had to click every single song she downloaded.. including ones purchased as albums. On iTMS, they just download automatically. It works transparently. You can even go and play other music in your Library.. don’t worry about finding your new tracks when they’re done: they’re automatically downlaoded to and sorted in the filesystem by your iTunes preferences, and also automatically added to a Smart Playlist called “Purchased Music.” Also, she talks about multiple types of licenses, including a “secondary license” that doesn’t allow her to burn her new music to a CD, which her husband’s computer was limited to because it was a secondary machine, and her primary machine crashed when using the Roxio plugin that’s apparently required to burn BM’s purchased musoc. iTMS has no such alternative licensing; every song has the same priveliges on every authenticated machine, Despite BuyMusic’s purported $0.79/song, most of them are $0.99, with a bunch as high as $1.29. Oh and don’t forget the identical commercials. Sounds like we have another Microsoft on our hands, in terms of copying Apple.

Read this awful message hidden inside a privacy policy: “we may disclose, sell, trade, or rent your Personally Identifiable Information to others without your consent”

Fuck that. Glad I own a Mac.

Panic, Adobe, Quark, Microsoft, Macromedia, Omni and 300,000 other developers are moving to Linux. Haven't you heard?

alternateorg on June 26, 2003

From MS-owned Slate: Linux’s new popularity may hurt Apple more than Microsoft.

Apple still has software applications not available on Linux—such as Quark for publishing, or Photoshop for graphics—but if Salkever’s analyst buddies step forth and pronounce Linux the No. 2 platform, software companies will re-evaluate their commitments.

Right. Macromedia is going to write Flash MX for KDE/Qt. Adobe’s going to write a GNOME version of Photoshop Elements. Every developer devoted to Apple’s platform is going to automagically change development platforms, processors, coding languages and sales channels, just because Linux may be announced as the #2 desktop OS by some lame assfuck who doesn’t know shit about shit, or more importantly, shit about Apple or Linux.

The one thing he neglects to mention (actually there are many things… which distribution of Linux? Which GUI? tcsh or bash? Sawfish or WindowMaker? How many grandmothers out there run Linux as opposed to Macs?) is that software developers can make money by writing software for Apple’s platform. Perhaps not as much as they would (theoretically) for Windows, but don’t forget that the amount of competitors a developer faces within the Windows world is exponentially larger to that of the Macintosh.

Write apps for Linux and decide to charge for them? Desktop apps, no less? Good fucking luck. Did we not just watch VA/Linux and all the other Linux guys go under or combine or get purchased because it’s very difficult to sell software that’s written for a free platform?

So what do you think? If BusinessWreck (er.. Week) decides to announce Linux as the #2 desktop install, are you going to switch?

UPDATE: John Gruber responds, as well. Now of course, his response is very carefully thought-out, and doesn’t contain gratuitous use of the word ‘fuck.’ But the point is basically the same.

Flash + Data = ?

alternateorg on April 24, 2003

Macromedia links Flash apps to data.

My thoughts as I’m reading this: Sounds good, sounds good, sounds about right, hrm,, no direct MySQL support, sounds good, sounds good, ColdFusion? People still use that? Sounds good, sounds good… $999 price tag for Flash Remoting? Good luck, Macromedia.

Just as they always do, Macromedia comes really close to getting something.. then just leaves you feeling screwed. To use PHP/MySQL, you still have to go through the still-required extra steps of taking MySQL data into XML, and writing your own ActionScript parser just so you can get nifty vector animations along with your dynamic data in the same compiled binary file.

Macromedia’s latest efforts would have you (if you feel like paying a ton of money instead) buy a ColdFusion license for at least $1299, or as much as $4999 (depending on the level of quality you need), buy a MSSQL Server license for at least $4999/processor, buy Windows 2000 server for $1199 to run the entire thing on….PLUS the $999 for Flash Remoting.

On the other hand (back to PHP), you could just write some XML-parsing code in ActionScript and some MySQL-XML translating code in PHP. Run it on Linux. Licensing fees? Nada. Massive development environment? Nope. Expensive production environment? Perhaps, but still not on-par with the Windows/ColdFusion world.

Or you could just use XHTML, forego the animation and buzzwords and get your files down to like 4k instead of 400k. Skip the XML step and get dyanamic data in its native form into your native code.

Why was I excited about Flash again? Oh, right. Because it takes 3x as long for me to produce so I get paid 3x the amount. Right.

Too many Windows

alternateorg on April 21, 2003

Microsoft at has 9.5 million different versions of Windows.

By current count, Microsoft offers about a half-dozen different versions each of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows CE .Net. Microsoft also considers Windows 2000 still to be a “current” product. Including the 64-bit editions, Microsoft also offers about six different Windows 2000 versions, bringing the total to about 24.

I’m still waiting for Windows RG, the one that’s supposed to work.

Also, previously forgotten until now, I was at the movie theater here, where pre-purchased tickets over the internet are redeemed at little stations placed in the lobby. When I went to use my credit card to have the machine print out my tickets, I was greeted with a nice little Windows CE logo combined with some insipid tagline on how great my life was going to be now that Windows CE was in it. Under which was an also-informative message that Windows CE had encountered a general protection fault error and needed maintenance. Of course, this meant I had to speak with an actual person, after waiting in line with actual people, which is never a pleasant experience.

Gateway Powerbook

alternateorg on December 20, 2002

Now, we’ve gotten used to Microsoft using old Mac hardware in their demos (it’s happened twice now, same photo). And any Mac user that moderately surfs the BestBuy coupons in the Sunday newspaper usually notices at least a few PC ads with screenshots of the MacOS pasted on their screens.

What hasn’t happened before is a prominent computer manufacturer showcasing an actual Apple Powerbook in its ads. Do you think they’re trying to claim ownership of the vents on the side and slot-loading DVD Burner? Or perhaps someone at Gateway’s ad agency just has a really great sense of humor.

Do MS 'converts' get subjected to the guilt that Catholic ones do?

alternateorg on October 15, 2002


While both Apple’s “switchers” and Microsoft’s “convert” are both unequivocal lovers of their new computers, Apple’s “switchers” tend to be plain spoken. By contrast, Microsoft’s “convert” sounds a bit like Microsoft’s own marketing department.

I won’t even begin to count the ways in which Microsoft has copied Apple. Suffice it to say the list is very long and is beyond the scope of this post. But a Mac to Windows switch ad, hosted on Microsoft’s own site? Jeebus. Let’s not miss fact that everything touted in the (now taken-down) “ad” as a Windows advantage over Mac exist currently for us. And most of those features were Mac-first. And MS is simultaneously running Office for Mac ads as well. Sounds a bit like someone’s got things confused over there. Even the photo of the woman in question was confessed to be stock.