Apple's Device Model Beats the PC Way 445
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Walt Mossberg argues in the Wall Street Journal that Apple's model for PCs and devices is beating Microsoft's. In early battles for dominance of the PC market, Microsoft's component-based platform crushed Apple's end-to-end model, he says. But in today's post-PC era, where the focus is on music players, game consoles and cellphones, the end-to-end model is the early winner. From the column: 'Even the Mac isn't as closed as its critics charge. It's still designed to work with Apple's own operating system and software. But it can handle all the common files Windows uses, can network with Windows machines, and can use all of the common Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice. The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows. Heck, the newest Macs can even run Windows itself.'"
Mossberg is "high class" infotainment. (Score:4, Interesting)
I Like Components... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know diddly about Apple. Can someone tell me how upgradable the typical Mac is? If I want to uprade the memory, cpu, hard drives, optical drives, gfx, etc., how easy is it to do this, and what's the longevity of the parts? How do prices compare between Apple and PC for these parts?
Software is the reverse (Score:4, Interesting)
Can Network With Windows Machines (Score:2, Interesting)
This is my only complaint about macs in a PC dominated world. It's a struggle to get AD working properly. Once this is a simple point and click wizard I'll be thrilled!
Re:History Repeats Itself (Score:5, Interesting)
It was a good book, and probably worth reading again now to see how his predictions are going.
Re:History Repeats Itself (Score:5, Interesting)
But a PC is intended and designed to be as general-use as possible. The very concept of software is to enable the device to perform functions that were not contemplated at the time of manufacturing. To the extent that the PC is modular, it fills that role better, because increasing the functionality beyond the design conception is cheaper and easier. Perhaps some people would be willing to give up the flexibility of a PC in favor of something like a game console: slicker, better at doing what it was intended to do, but limited to its designed functionality. But I think many people are attracted by the open-ended nature of possibilities created by a general-purpose PC.
convert (Score:3, Interesting)
I am so impressed with the way os x works. it is fast, accessible (through the bsd subsystem) and i can do anything on my ibook than i can on my desktop (no i dont game). After my experiences running a mac, i will never buy another non-mac pc. even if that means that i have to wait to save more money, they last longer and run better than windows machines.
Apple May Not Win... (Score:2, Interesting)
I am certainly happy that Apple/Macs are getting better and better and are able to compete with Microsoft/Windows. All that does for us is give us better products faster from both companies and I am certainly not going to be upset with that.
Re:History Repeats Itself (Score:3, Interesting)
Now compare this to a computer. External devices used to be directly chained to the bus via ISA, PCI, PCMCIA, or Serial lines. As time progressed, the market moved to a generic "in-between" bus known as USB. (Universal Serial Bus) Just like with generators today, any device that has a USB connector can be attached to nearly any large computing device. With a hub, USB devices can even be chained to allow for as many devices to be controlled as can reasonably be handled by a single device.
The parallels are simply amazing.
Re:convert (Score:3, Interesting)
Missing the change... (Score:5, Interesting)
1985, Apple's offering is about $4000, the IBM offering is ONLY $3000... A few years later, Apple's offering remains about $3500, IBM compatibles are $2000...
Now, remember we have 20+ years of inflation... That $4000 machine from Apple is like spending $10,000 in today's dollars ($8000 from inflation, another $2000 from income increases)
For a while, the price differential was huge.
Now? The "Apple is expensive" crowd is sounding increasingly absurd. The Mac Mini is like $500-$700, the Dell is $400-$600... Sure there is a price differential, but it's now small. $100-$200 difference is NOTHING compared to the $1500 ($3000-$3500 in today's dollards) difference.
A family today often has two computers, maybe more. My Apple
Five years ago, the idea of a central home computer with WinTerms seemed like a possible future. Now, why bother, the workstations are basically free. We don't have modular systems, we have digital hubs...
10 years ago I went to college with a computer containing: a motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, 3D acceleration card, ethernet card, SCSI card, sound card, 2-3 hard drives, CD-ROM, CD-Recorder, etc....
Now, I use a MacBook Pro, but it wouldn't matter if I had a PC... I'd have a machine with a keywork, mouse, monitor, and box. Upgrades? Everything is on-board, USB/Firewire peripherals add my expansion. Do I need to upgrade a video card? Why bother, when you can get an entire computer for $400-$600 why do I need replacable parts? Only on laptops where a $2k-$3k replacement cost may matter do I even think about how nice it would be for a speed up.
Computers are cheap and disposable.
Alex
Re:Expense is more than cash at the register. (Score:2, Interesting)
And btw...your friend tried to save a few bucks by purchasing everything at Frys? Good lord! Do you buy your discount clothes at Macys too? My friend priced out his computer at frys, went home, in 15 minutes had priced it out on newegg, and saved about $350. Ordered it, came one day later, and in two hours we had a system built from the ground up, and completely operational.
And savings often comes later... (Score:3, Interesting)
I probably build an average of a system every two months (friends, family, etc.) for other people. In the last six years, I haven't had any components that "just didn't like each other". Most of them go off without a hitch, and wind up being very easy to upgrade (future cost savings) because they all use robust, standard components, not some bizarre crap an OEM/VAR decided was a good idea. I find that most of the ways that VARs add "value" is really adding nonstandard crap that can't be fixed, supported, or upgraded later.
The savings come in when I can do selective upgrades. Upgrade my vid board because I want better framerates for a new game I just picked up? No problem. Need a dual core because of some new project? No problem - planned for that when I bought the motherboard. Want to upgrade the PS to an 80% efficient one, or an ultra-quiet one? No problem. Consider that I haven't upgraded my actual case in five years, nor my power supply in the last three, yet I've gone through several rounds of motherboards/procs. Each time I just upgrade pieces, I save over either having to a) do without or b) go buy a whole new box.
Bottom line is decide what fits your needs. If you know what you're doing, build a machine if you want. If you're willing to invest time in learning, build a machine if you want. If you have no clue and/or don't want to invest the time to learn, pay somebody else to do it for you. Ain't specialization a great economic concept?
Apple gave up the end-to-end model (Score:3, Interesting)
So how is this a good example of an end-to-end model?
Re:Modularity was because things broke easy (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason PCs were so modular back in the day is because A.) They were expensive and sometimes you didn't need to buy everything and B.) Cheaper and easier to replace parts of the computer than the whole thing.
Remember the good old days when a 386 or 486 came with just the cpu, ram, HDD, and maybe a video card? And the thing still costed $3,000 for the base unit?
However, you could add on a modem, sound card, and CD-Rom for extra money? And those were even $500 per unit.
Also, computer parts didn't seem as reliable back then depending I still have an old IBM ps1 that is still kicking and has all its original parts but there were plenty of computer that come in our shop that the modem, video card, or cpu died and we just had to swap out just that part. It sucked when a part died and you could remove it and get a new one. Which is why I loathed integrated video and modems because they were the first to go. (Damn you Packard Bell! Damn you!)
These days... You can get a cd rom, modems, sound cards, basic video cards for $20 bucks brand new.
And they are generally reliable enough that you can just integrate them in the system without the problems of old... Heck, you can't hardly find a mother board these days without sound and network not built in.
If it breaks, you can literally throw out the whole thing and get a new one for a fraction of what it cost when you originally bought the thing a few years ago.
What we are seeing is not that modularization isn't as good as end to end, but the prices and quality of hard ware these days make a moot point.
Re:History Repeats Itself (Score:5, Interesting)
But that's just what they said about the general purpose electric motor. That's the whole point of the analogy.
As an extreme example, take Word Processing and Spreadsheet use. You may think that the same general purpose computer is best adapted to both tasks. But it's not:
Word processing on a PC is compromised because the screen is the wrong shape to fit a representation of a piece of paper on. A portrait orientation would work better. Yet for spreadsheets, landscape is better.
Likewise the keyboard is not optimised for either task. Instead of anonymous but general purpose buttons market F1-F12, and relatively arbitrary control and alt key combinations, which vary from application to application, there should be buttons marked perhaps BOLD, CENTER, STYLE etc. on the word processor and ABSOLUTE/RELATIVE or SUM on the spreadsheet.
Who knows, perhaps the spreadsheet would be better with different pointing scrolling controls. Perhaps a trackball purely for scrolling.
Perhaps the word processor should have a scanner/ocr built in. Because it doesn't need anything more than a cheap embedded CPU and no fancy 3D graphics it could have extras like that and still be a fraction of the price of a general purpose PC.
BTW, don't argue with any of the specific suggestions here. They're out of my hat and for demonstration purposes only. The point is that looking at each application separately, hardware can be designed to support a specific problem far better than the general purpose machine can. Those optimal designs would certainly be different from my examples.
Re:Expense is more than cash at the register. (Score:3, Interesting)
More than half of the PCs I've owned in my life required tools to open.
I reject your claim that "Apple intentionally didn't make it easy" to open, because I own one and can tell you first hand, that it's incredibly fucking easy to open. A small child could do it.
You slide a putty knife in on one side to bend back a few of the clips, pull it open a little bit. Do the same on the other side. Then just swing it open.
It opens in less than a third of the time it takes to open a typical cheap ATX case that's screwed shut.
Why is it clipped like that? Bacause Apple's priority with the mini case design was size and air flow, not simplicity of popping it open.
But you still didn't answer my question: Why is it that otherwise "1337 hardware haX0rs" seem to be so terrified of slipping the top off from this simple and inexpensive computer???
Perhaps phenomenon similar to hi-fi audio industry (Score:2, Interesting)
Now components are a smaller piece of the market, I think. That's how it looks from the street where I'm standing. I didn't do any research. I just see fewer hi-fi stores with fewer products to choose among now.
Apparently Mossberg thinks a similar shift will happen with personal computing. I hope that shift doesn't harm my interests. I want access to components for building general-use PCs that I can use for graphics production, games, web design or audio production
But when my old stereo power amp or tuner dies, I sure hope I can find a suitable, quality replacement. No all-in-ones for me. I can see similarities between the two industries in light of this article.