Sorry to catch you between my irritations and Steve. This isn't aimed
at you, this is aimed at the decision makers at Apple. I'm just hoping
someone upstairs will see this in this archive.
On 2005.6.9, at 02:36 AM, Edward Moy wrote:
I'm just a lowly engineer, so such decisions are way above me. I can
only hope that the decision makers know what they are doing.
From where I stand, they seem not to see the forest for the trees.
Maybe Dvorak should be banned reading on the Apple campus. One thing is
guaranteed, he is always wrong. And when he is right, he is dead wrong.
Giving in to the monoculture mindset is the last thing Apple should do.
If you believe that Apple can create products at the same price as a
pc knockoff company down the street, you are going to be constantly
disappointed. Apple does not build hardware; it builds systems.
Two nics on a Mac Mini screams, "Systems!" Tweak the Mac Mini a little
and it would be the perfect platform for any number of intelligent
routers, and, yes, Apple is selling a router right now, so we know
routers are on Apple's roadmap. Routers are a key point in any real
systems solution, and routers that the customer can tweak would be a
huge plus.
"Intelligent router" means things like perl built in, by the way, so it
isn't that far off topic.
And, no, a wonderful OS is not a systems solution unless Apple can turn
the corner here. You guys seemed to be turning straight into
monoculture's defensive line, and those guys are huge and are going to
tear you to pieces.
That includes the software. Our overhead (such as my paycheck ;-) is
always going to be higher because we have to pay for all the
development costs.
Not all, not be any means. Apple needs to learn to use their user
community more effectively, and one thing that is not effective is
suddenly saying, "Hey, all you guys that were trying to avoid the
monoculture by working with us, sorry, but you have to join us in the
monoculture now."
And because are systems require unique parts, created at a much lower
volume than in the pc world, our hardware costs are also going to be
higher.
Fine. But Apple has a nice capital reserve, and that reserve has not
been shrinking. Nor has Apple been losing position in the market, for
all the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth on the part of the
pundits.
We hope that the additional price our customers pay is justified by
the fit-n-finish that we put into the systems.
You can't add fit-n-finish without help from the customers. (That is
one way of describing the entire meaning of the open source community.)
As you say this OT, so I should not comment further on this.
And neither should I have, but sometimes etiquette has to go by the
board.
Apple seems to be going backwards from the "listen to the customer"
attitude that brought them this far.
IBM may be paying too much attention to the game console market right
now, and that may hurt Apple temporarily, but moving all the eggs to
the iNTEL basket is a serious strategical error.
Edward Moy
Apple
On Jun 8, 2005, at 8:48 AM, Joel Rees wrote:
On 2005.6.8, at 01:57 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi Sherm. For those who don't know me, I'm the perl maintainer at
Apple, and I admit I keep a low profile on this list. But I wanted
clear up a few things:
Well, Ed, I'm not Sherm, and I don't have any claim to fame, but I
wish you could clear up why Steve would do something as insane as
inserting Apple into the x86 monoculture.
I'd have no complaints if Apple were offering Mac OS X86 boxes as a
second line. I don't buy the megahertz myth, so I have no problem
paying a little higher price for the PowerPC Mac Mini compared with
an x86 of similar clock, even with the FSB rate a tenth of the CPU
clock instead of a half. On the contrary, low average power on the
Mac Mini fits it into the Japanese power budget just fine.
The most frustrating part of Mac OS X is the lack of product range.
For instance, I'd love a PPC box the size of the Mac Mini at half the
spec and loaded only with Darwin, but with an extra NIC, for $300.
(I'd by three at $200 each, but I'm trying to make a point here.) The
current speed/power is only a serious detriment to a bunch of critics
who won't be buying Macs anyway.
(And, just between you and me, but I don't see why Steve is so
enamored of Pentium M, especially without seeing whether iNTEL can
actually push that piece of junk up to 64 bits.)
Anyway, if you by any chance have a communication path up high enough
to reach whoever decided that PowerPC had to be dropped, I'd
appreciate it if you could be so kind as to pass on a request to keep
the PowerPC line going as long as it doesn't just totally bleed red
ink across multiple quarters.
--
Joel Rees
The master plan in open source is simple:
The user figures out what he or she needs and does it.
--
Joel Rees
Getting involved in the neighbor's family squabbles is dangerous.
But if the abusive partner has a habit of shooting through his/her
roof,
the guy who lives upstairs is in a bit of a catch-22.
