Thursday, March 30, 2006
Another Mac Intel hurdle bites the dust
When Steve Jobs rolled out the first Intel-based Macs back in January, Apple's top of the line minitowers were curiously absent. Various theories were floated as to why the the PowerMac G5 remained a PowerMac G5 while the iMac and PowerBook moved on to better things, but the most common assumption (hinted at by Steve himself) was the fact that the typical PowerMac G5 user buys the machine in order to use high-end creative professional tools ranging from Adobe's Photoshop to Apple's own Final Cut Studio. Steve said that Apple's own apps would be rolled over to Intel "in March," and while the company cut it a little close, an Intel-friendly version of Final Cut Studio was in fact shipped today. It's not that Final Cut Studio couldn't already run on an Intel-based Mac, it's just that there was enough translation going on to cancel out the Intel speed advantages. But that's over now, at least for Final Cut Studio users as well as users of Apple's Logic software, rolled to Intel back in February.
Photoshop and most other third party high-end pro apps are still waiting for their official internal makeovers, but Apple holding up its end of the bargain (on time) puts us one step closer to the finish line. By which I mean that once a high enough percentage of pro apps are Intel-native, Apple will presumably feel comfortable in rolling the PowerMac G5 over to Intel. Of course, since the machine will no longer be a PowerMac nor a G5, a wholsale name change will likely come with it, but we have to figure Apple took care of that bit of semantics internally some time ago.
So as a laptop user, why do I care when the PowerMac goes Intel? Because, quite simply, I want the whole thing over with. Altruistically, I believe that all new Mac users deserve the chance to tap Intel speed regardless of which Mac model best fits their needs. And selfishly, getting the whole thing over with means that the rest of the laptop line will be Intel-based as well, meaning that I can get down to the business of choosing my next Mac laptop from all available options, not just the one that's currently out there (as I talked about yesterday).
It's almost ridiculous how smoothly and quietly the whole Intel transition has gone so far. It's going to be done soon, and most potential Switchers won't even know anything actually happened, other than the knowledge that things are noticeably faster now, along with the vague notion that Macs are somehow now better in the "compatibility" department. Hey, since no one out there has any idea what compatibility means in reference to the Mac platform anyway, and since there's no chance of ever properly correcting those misconceptions, Apple might as well just tilt the misconceptions in its favor. But as smoothly as things are going, it would seem that the only remaining point of true controversy is this: just what are they going to call the new Powermac G5?
When Steve Jobs rolled out the first Intel-based Macs back in January, Apple's top of the line minitowers were curiously absent. Various theories were floated as to why the the PowerMac G5 remained a PowerMac G5 while the iMac and PowerBook moved on to better things, but the most common assumption (hinted at by Steve himself) was the fact that the typical PowerMac G5 user buys the machine in order to use high-end creative professional tools ranging from Adobe's Photoshop to Apple's own Final Cut Studio. Steve said that Apple's own apps would be rolled over to Intel "in March," and while the company cut it a little close, an Intel-friendly version of Final Cut Studio was in fact shipped today. It's not that Final Cut Studio couldn't already run on an Intel-based Mac, it's just that there was enough translation going on to cancel out the Intel speed advantages. But that's over now, at least for Final Cut Studio users as well as users of Apple's Logic software, rolled to Intel back in February.
Photoshop and most other third party high-end pro apps are still waiting for their official internal makeovers, but Apple holding up its end of the bargain (on time) puts us one step closer to the finish line. By which I mean that once a high enough percentage of pro apps are Intel-native, Apple will presumably feel comfortable in rolling the PowerMac G5 over to Intel. Of course, since the machine will no longer be a PowerMac nor a G5, a wholsale name change will likely come with it, but we have to figure Apple took care of that bit of semantics internally some time ago.
So as a laptop user, why do I care when the PowerMac goes Intel? Because, quite simply, I want the whole thing over with. Altruistically, I believe that all new Mac users deserve the chance to tap Intel speed regardless of which Mac model best fits their needs. And selfishly, getting the whole thing over with means that the rest of the laptop line will be Intel-based as well, meaning that I can get down to the business of choosing my next Mac laptop from all available options, not just the one that's currently out there (as I talked about yesterday).
It's almost ridiculous how smoothly and quietly the whole Intel transition has gone so far. It's going to be done soon, and most potential Switchers won't even know anything actually happened, other than the knowledge that things are noticeably faster now, along with the vague notion that Macs are somehow now better in the "compatibility" department. Hey, since no one out there has any idea what compatibility means in reference to the Mac platform anyway, and since there's no chance of ever properly correcting those misconceptions, Apple might as well just tilt the misconceptions in its favor. But as smoothly as things are going, it would seem that the only remaining point of true controversy is this: just what are they going to call the new Powermac G5?
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Come on Apple, where's the MacBook?
Seth over at MacMove stirred up some controversy this week when he more or less suggested that Apple's current laptop lineup is a mess. His whole article is worth a read, but in a nutshell he thinks that Apple blew the whole thing up by moving the fifteen inch PowerBook to an Intel processor while leaving the entire iBook line (and the rest of the PowerBook line) on an aging processor in the form of the G4. Since we all know that all of the remaining G4-based laptops are potentially a heartbeat away from going Intel, they're all currently a bad buy, leaving potential Mac laptop purchasers with only one good choice (the MacBook Pro) whether it happens to suit their needs or not.
Truth is, I largely agree with him, and not just because he happens to be a friend of mine. If I were buying a new Mac laptop today, there is only one model I would look at. But while he sees the MacBook Pro as the problem, I see it as the opposite: thank god we finally have one good laptop model. Beats the pants off of what we had back in 2005, when they all sucked.
Lest someone go and get the wrong idea, let me be clear here: by using words such as "good" and "sucked" to describe the various Mac laptop models, I'm ONLY referring to their speed. But I think back to my quandary in the early part of last year, where my aging 667 Mhz G4 PowerBook was just too slow to keep up with my workflow, and to my disappointment, my only choice was yet another G4-based laptop. I waited as long as I could for the mythical G5 PowerBook, but once we finally got officlal word that we were instead going to Intel and we found out the delayed timeframe for that, I knew there was no way I was going to make it all the way to 2006 before upgrading. Refusing to spend $2000 on a soon-to-be-outdated G4 PowerBook, I instead opted to spend $1000 on a soon-to-be-outdated G4 iBook. If you're going to flush money away on a stop-gap measure, you might as well flush away as little as possible, right?
My penance has been that I've had to live with a twelve inch screen for the past nine months, which has turned out to be not nearly so awkward as I had feared. The whole experience has turned out quite positiviely. The iBook has played exactly the role I intended it to, and now that the Intel-based PowerBook (eh, MacBook Pro) is on the market, I can upgrade whenever I feel like it. The only thing that's holding me back at this point is that the whole twelve inch experiment has gone more positively than I had thought, and so at this point I want to wait for the 12 inch MacBook Pro (if not the 12 inch MacBook) to hit the market, so that I can at least give it a spin in person, before deciding which path to go down.
My situation may not be typical, as I'm currently using a Mac laptop that does the job for me, and while my workflow would undoubtedly benefit from Intel-based speed, it's not crucial at the moment. The kicker, though, is this: if I were to buy a MacBook Pro today, I'd be sellling my current G4 iBook, and I'd get darn good money for it. You want to know why? Because it's the same darn iBook that Apple's still selling today, 1.33 Ghz and all. My iBook is nine months old, and yet it's the current model. If you want a more obvious example, I was chatting a few weeks ago with a former co-worker who bought a G4 iBook two and a half years ago. It was a 1.0 Ghz machine. This is progress?
If you want to explain to me how today's brand new iBook can only be thirty-three percent faster than the iBook of 2003...well, it gives you an idea of just how incredibly unfortunate the whole G4 era turned out to be, at least on the laptop side. It makes me upset just to think about how much potential the whole PowerPC platform had, and how terribly Motorola and IBM managed to alternately botch the whole thing over the years, and how badly it turned out in the end. Seth is right in that Apple's current laptop lineup makes very little sense in terms of the speed of each model (just the fact that the 15 inch model runs four times faster than the more expensive 17 inch model should spell it out clearly enough). But I would argue that having one fast model amongst a bunch of slow ones is preferable to having no fast models at all.
You're probably tempted to worry about sales, though, since everyone knows that only one of Apple's current laptop models is fast. But let me correct you there. Sure, every one of you reading this knows about it. But to the other ninety (if not ninety-nine percent) of the population, Apple's laptop lineup doesn't look any different now than it did back in 2005. If you think I'm underestimating the public, then grab someone off the street at random (current Mac user or otherwise) and quiz them as to which of Apple's laptop models, if any, is currently using an Intel processor. The few people who do actually know what you're talking about will probably incorrectly state that "they all are," while everyone else will just look at you like you're crazy. Point being that even the few folks who walk into an Apple Store armed with knowledge about the move to Intel will probably just assume that every Mac in the store is already Intel-based anyway.
I'm not saying Apple's trying to pull a fast one on anyone, as most of the computing public is so unbelievably misinformed when it comes to personal computers that you could spend the rest of your life trying to set them straight and they still wouldn't get it, so I don't blame Apple for not wanting to put a big green arrow over the Intel Macs and a big red one over the PowerPC-based Macs. But don't think that Apple's decision to keep all the new Intel-based Macs looking identical to their PowerPC-based predecessors was a coincidence or a sign that Jonathan Ive has been on vacation too long. What it really means is that while Apple is perfectly willing to get on TV and tell the world that they're going Intel, they're also hoping that not too large of a percentage of the population figures out that there's a phased transition going on.
All of which is to say that I don't believe that the phased transition is hurting overall sales. Those of us who are deeply enough in the know to time our purchases around the Intel transition are a small enough group such that our direct sales impact is negligible. There is the issue of how many outsiders rely on us for buying advice, but even then you're only relying on a small percentage of the overall picture. Instead, what the phased transition has done is that it's given those of us who are in the know an opportunity to grab on to at least one fast model, if we want to. In my case, the G4 may be wretched slow in comparison to the MacBook Pro, but it still gets the job done. That having been said, it's right about time that Apple hurry up and get the MacBook to market as an iBook replacement, so that those of us who often find ourselves making purchasing recommendations can go back to recommending all of Apple's laptops without hesitation.
Here's a hypothetical for you that perhaps illustrates the point better: if a Windows-using friend of yours was about to buy his next laptop and he was looking at either a G4 iBook or Windows laptop, and the MacBook Pro was out of his budget, and you knew there was no way you could get him to wait for the MacBook to come out...would you encourage him to go ahead and buy the iBook? Keep in mind, the alternative is that he goes ahead and buys another Windows laptop. Tough one, eh?
Seth over at MacMove stirred up some controversy this week when he more or less suggested that Apple's current laptop lineup is a mess. His whole article is worth a read, but in a nutshell he thinks that Apple blew the whole thing up by moving the fifteen inch PowerBook to an Intel processor while leaving the entire iBook line (and the rest of the PowerBook line) on an aging processor in the form of the G4. Since we all know that all of the remaining G4-based laptops are potentially a heartbeat away from going Intel, they're all currently a bad buy, leaving potential Mac laptop purchasers with only one good choice (the MacBook Pro) whether it happens to suit their needs or not.
Truth is, I largely agree with him, and not just because he happens to be a friend of mine. If I were buying a new Mac laptop today, there is only one model I would look at. But while he sees the MacBook Pro as the problem, I see it as the opposite: thank god we finally have one good laptop model. Beats the pants off of what we had back in 2005, when they all sucked.
Lest someone go and get the wrong idea, let me be clear here: by using words such as "good" and "sucked" to describe the various Mac laptop models, I'm ONLY referring to their speed. But I think back to my quandary in the early part of last year, where my aging 667 Mhz G4 PowerBook was just too slow to keep up with my workflow, and to my disappointment, my only choice was yet another G4-based laptop. I waited as long as I could for the mythical G5 PowerBook, but once we finally got officlal word that we were instead going to Intel and we found out the delayed timeframe for that, I knew there was no way I was going to make it all the way to 2006 before upgrading. Refusing to spend $2000 on a soon-to-be-outdated G4 PowerBook, I instead opted to spend $1000 on a soon-to-be-outdated G4 iBook. If you're going to flush money away on a stop-gap measure, you might as well flush away as little as possible, right?
My penance has been that I've had to live with a twelve inch screen for the past nine months, which has turned out to be not nearly so awkward as I had feared. The whole experience has turned out quite positiviely. The iBook has played exactly the role I intended it to, and now that the Intel-based PowerBook (eh, MacBook Pro) is on the market, I can upgrade whenever I feel like it. The only thing that's holding me back at this point is that the whole twelve inch experiment has gone more positively than I had thought, and so at this point I want to wait for the 12 inch MacBook Pro (if not the 12 inch MacBook) to hit the market, so that I can at least give it a spin in person, before deciding which path to go down.
My situation may not be typical, as I'm currently using a Mac laptop that does the job for me, and while my workflow would undoubtedly benefit from Intel-based speed, it's not crucial at the moment. The kicker, though, is this: if I were to buy a MacBook Pro today, I'd be sellling my current G4 iBook, and I'd get darn good money for it. You want to know why? Because it's the same darn iBook that Apple's still selling today, 1.33 Ghz and all. My iBook is nine months old, and yet it's the current model. If you want a more obvious example, I was chatting a few weeks ago with a former co-worker who bought a G4 iBook two and a half years ago. It was a 1.0 Ghz machine. This is progress?
If you want to explain to me how today's brand new iBook can only be thirty-three percent faster than the iBook of 2003...well, it gives you an idea of just how incredibly unfortunate the whole G4 era turned out to be, at least on the laptop side. It makes me upset just to think about how much potential the whole PowerPC platform had, and how terribly Motorola and IBM managed to alternately botch the whole thing over the years, and how badly it turned out in the end. Seth is right in that Apple's current laptop lineup makes very little sense in terms of the speed of each model (just the fact that the 15 inch model runs four times faster than the more expensive 17 inch model should spell it out clearly enough). But I would argue that having one fast model amongst a bunch of slow ones is preferable to having no fast models at all.
You're probably tempted to worry about sales, though, since everyone knows that only one of Apple's current laptop models is fast. But let me correct you there. Sure, every one of you reading this knows about it. But to the other ninety (if not ninety-nine percent) of the population, Apple's laptop lineup doesn't look any different now than it did back in 2005. If you think I'm underestimating the public, then grab someone off the street at random (current Mac user or otherwise) and quiz them as to which of Apple's laptop models, if any, is currently using an Intel processor. The few people who do actually know what you're talking about will probably incorrectly state that "they all are," while everyone else will just look at you like you're crazy. Point being that even the few folks who walk into an Apple Store armed with knowledge about the move to Intel will probably just assume that every Mac in the store is already Intel-based anyway.
I'm not saying Apple's trying to pull a fast one on anyone, as most of the computing public is so unbelievably misinformed when it comes to personal computers that you could spend the rest of your life trying to set them straight and they still wouldn't get it, so I don't blame Apple for not wanting to put a big green arrow over the Intel Macs and a big red one over the PowerPC-based Macs. But don't think that Apple's decision to keep all the new Intel-based Macs looking identical to their PowerPC-based predecessors was a coincidence or a sign that Jonathan Ive has been on vacation too long. What it really means is that while Apple is perfectly willing to get on TV and tell the world that they're going Intel, they're also hoping that not too large of a percentage of the population figures out that there's a phased transition going on.
All of which is to say that I don't believe that the phased transition is hurting overall sales. Those of us who are deeply enough in the know to time our purchases around the Intel transition are a small enough group such that our direct sales impact is negligible. There is the issue of how many outsiders rely on us for buying advice, but even then you're only relying on a small percentage of the overall picture. Instead, what the phased transition has done is that it's given those of us who are in the know an opportunity to grab on to at least one fast model, if we want to. In my case, the G4 may be wretched slow in comparison to the MacBook Pro, but it still gets the job done. That having been said, it's right about time that Apple hurry up and get the MacBook to market as an iBook replacement, so that those of us who often find ourselves making purchasing recommendations can go back to recommending all of Apple's laptops without hesitation.
Here's a hypothetical for you that perhaps illustrates the point better: if a Windows-using friend of yours was about to buy his next laptop and he was looking at either a G4 iBook or Windows laptop, and the MacBook Pro was out of his budget, and you knew there was no way you could get him to wait for the MacBook to come out...would you encourage him to go ahead and buy the iBook? Keep in mind, the alternative is that he goes ahead and buys another Windows laptop. Tough one, eh?
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Have we reached halftime of the Mac renaissance?
Oh gosh dear gee, have I gone and done what I said I wasn't going to do? How many weeks has it been since I've written about the Mac? Where does the time go? Or more accurately, where did the subject matter go? Is this entire first paragraph going to be nothing but questions?
Yep, I guess so. I've always said that writer's block is not a lack of words, but a lack of subject matter. However you define it, I seem to have contracted it this year, at least when it comes to the Mac. I look around the Mac web, though, and I'm far from the only one. Too many good Mac sites just aren't offering up content like they used to, and it leads to the question: is it over? Is there nothing else to write? It seems all that needed to be said about how the Mac got to this point has already been said. No more history lessons needed. We're in the present now, but it's one in which there simply isn't much happening. Nah, let me rephrase that, there's plenty happening. MacOS X has stabilized into a nearly perfect operating system, the software that comes with it has become a dazzling embarrassment of riches, and there are more and more new Mac users every day.
But how do you write about that? A year or two ago, there was so much angst out there, so much fear, controversy, misinformation. And if you go back a year or two prior to that, there were actual things to worry about. It seems the further back you look, the worse things were for this platform, and thus the easier it was to find source material. But now what? Movies end because they've reached the point where you know the characters you care about are going to live happily ever after. The story doesn't keep going just to cover the minute day-in day-out details of the happily ever after, because there would be no suspense in it.
Much as the scenario seems to fit the circumstances, though, I don't think the Mac web is a movie nearing its ending. And I don't think we're headed for a sequel, either. Sequels are about the next time the characters you care about stop living their happily ever after long enough to run into future troubles and drum up another story worth telling in the process. I don't think we need the Mac to falter and rebound in order for the Mac web to make a comeback. Certainly you would hope it wouldn't come to that, and I don't think it'll happen anyway. At this point the Mac is just too well-positioned for things to suddenly go monumentally south overnight. Let's not forget that the sudden "crisis" that the Mac faced in the mid to late nineties was more than a dozen years in the making, with its roots all the way back in the head of a soda company forcing Steve Jobs out the first time. So if the current CEO of Pepsi comes along this year and forces Steve out again, then we can look for the Mac to be right back in crisis land by the year 2020 -- a bit too save the Mac web if it's going to lie dormant in the mean time.
We're not done, though, I swear it. I actually found the right metaphor earlier this week when the Miami Dolphins were introducing their new quarterback in Daunte Culpepper, who remarked that he felt as if his career had reached halftime and he looked forward to getting the second half underway. The metaphor might work a little more smoothly for him because "halftime" is a football term and he actually plays football, but I believe it's an apt way to describe the current state of the Mac web nonetheless. Or more accurately, we've reached halftime of the renaissance of the Macintosh platform itself.
The fear, uncertainty, and doubt of the first half of the Mac renaissance have been largely washed away, and so the first half of the game has come to and end. The second half of the renaissance will begin when everyone's using a Mac (and by "everyone" I mean twenty or thirty percent of the people out there) and we're talking about a mainstream enough of a platform that there will be entirely different ways to look at and examine things, different things to talk about. I can't quite put my finger on just what the second half of the game will look like, but I do know it's going to be a lot of fun to write about. The way the iPod is a cultural phenomenon right now? That's what the Mac will be in a few years. Except the Mac will be bigger, because there's so much more you can do with it, so many more opportunities for it to change your life.
We'll be there soon enough. With the platform seeing forty percent year over year growth, you can do your own math on how quickly things are going to grow, and make your own projections on when that growth will be sufficient to put us into the second half of the game. In the mean time, we might as well enjoy halftime. Our team may have started the game with an insurmountable lead, but heading into halftime things have somehow managed to turn sharply in our team's favor. Best get your bathroom breaks and your dog walking out of the way now, because the second half kickoff will be here before you know it.
Oh gosh dear gee, have I gone and done what I said I wasn't going to do? How many weeks has it been since I've written about the Mac? Where does the time go? Or more accurately, where did the subject matter go? Is this entire first paragraph going to be nothing but questions?
Yep, I guess so. I've always said that writer's block is not a lack of words, but a lack of subject matter. However you define it, I seem to have contracted it this year, at least when it comes to the Mac. I look around the Mac web, though, and I'm far from the only one. Too many good Mac sites just aren't offering up content like they used to, and it leads to the question: is it over? Is there nothing else to write? It seems all that needed to be said about how the Mac got to this point has already been said. No more history lessons needed. We're in the present now, but it's one in which there simply isn't much happening. Nah, let me rephrase that, there's plenty happening. MacOS X has stabilized into a nearly perfect operating system, the software that comes with it has become a dazzling embarrassment of riches, and there are more and more new Mac users every day.
But how do you write about that? A year or two ago, there was so much angst out there, so much fear, controversy, misinformation. And if you go back a year or two prior to that, there were actual things to worry about. It seems the further back you look, the worse things were for this platform, and thus the easier it was to find source material. But now what? Movies end because they've reached the point where you know the characters you care about are going to live happily ever after. The story doesn't keep going just to cover the minute day-in day-out details of the happily ever after, because there would be no suspense in it.
Much as the scenario seems to fit the circumstances, though, I don't think the Mac web is a movie nearing its ending. And I don't think we're headed for a sequel, either. Sequels are about the next time the characters you care about stop living their happily ever after long enough to run into future troubles and drum up another story worth telling in the process. I don't think we need the Mac to falter and rebound in order for the Mac web to make a comeback. Certainly you would hope it wouldn't come to that, and I don't think it'll happen anyway. At this point the Mac is just too well-positioned for things to suddenly go monumentally south overnight. Let's not forget that the sudden "crisis" that the Mac faced in the mid to late nineties was more than a dozen years in the making, with its roots all the way back in the head of a soda company forcing Steve Jobs out the first time. So if the current CEO of Pepsi comes along this year and forces Steve out again, then we can look for the Mac to be right back in crisis land by the year 2020 -- a bit too save the Mac web if it's going to lie dormant in the mean time.
We're not done, though, I swear it. I actually found the right metaphor earlier this week when the Miami Dolphins were introducing their new quarterback in Daunte Culpepper, who remarked that he felt as if his career had reached halftime and he looked forward to getting the second half underway. The metaphor might work a little more smoothly for him because "halftime" is a football term and he actually plays football, but I believe it's an apt way to describe the current state of the Mac web nonetheless. Or more accurately, we've reached halftime of the renaissance of the Macintosh platform itself.
The fear, uncertainty, and doubt of the first half of the Mac renaissance have been largely washed away, and so the first half of the game has come to and end. The second half of the renaissance will begin when everyone's using a Mac (and by "everyone" I mean twenty or thirty percent of the people out there) and we're talking about a mainstream enough of a platform that there will be entirely different ways to look at and examine things, different things to talk about. I can't quite put my finger on just what the second half of the game will look like, but I do know it's going to be a lot of fun to write about. The way the iPod is a cultural phenomenon right now? That's what the Mac will be in a few years. Except the Mac will be bigger, because there's so much more you can do with it, so many more opportunities for it to change your life.
We'll be there soon enough. With the platform seeing forty percent year over year growth, you can do your own math on how quickly things are going to grow, and make your own projections on when that growth will be sufficient to put us into the second half of the game. In the mean time, we might as well enjoy halftime. Our team may have started the game with an insurmountable lead, but heading into halftime things have somehow managed to turn sharply in our team's favor. Best get your bathroom breaks and your dog walking out of the way now, because the second half kickoff will be here before you know it.
