It doesn’t take much faith to realize that Apple’s policy is to create/force product integration across all it’s lineups. Now that it has a bit of a toehold with the Mac you’re going to see more and more compatibility scalebacks, trying to push the consumer unto a completely Apple product line. The pro- visual market, which was Apple’s bread and butter during the lean years, feels like Apple has gone and left them adrift - which they have. Apple wants to control everything through Final Cut Pro and cut out Adobe completely, if at all possible (certainly they’re cutting Adobe out of the iPhone).
Blu-ray competes with iTunes/iTV directly, so you won’t see Apple supporting it for a very, very long time.
A lot of the historical core Mac-heads seem to be pretty peeved off about the ditching of Firewire and the lack of matte display options on the newer laptops.
All in all… meh, IMO. If anyone other than Apple held a big press event like this to announce such minor updates to their laptops they’d be laughed off the Internet.
How has Apple “cut out Adobe completely”? Does Photoshop no longer run on OS X? Premier? Is there some secret internal Apple chant about how “Snow Leopard isn’t done until Lightroom won’t run”?
And what does the iPhone have to do with the “pro-visual” market?
As i’ve been following Apple casually for the last couple years, i remember quite a lot of talk about Apple not providing timely developer support to Adobe products as being a consistent pattern.
What i mean is that Apple survived, by and large, because of Adobe’s unique relationship with Apple products during the non-Jobs years, and there was a feeling that Apple would somehow reciprocate the goodwill. It seems this is not the case, and if anything, there is some animosity towards Adobe as a powerful competitor and potential market for growth. Alot like gaming on Macs, Apple doesn’t care if you are making stuff for the Apple platform that they care nothing about; Apple will pursue Apple’s agenda completely indifferent to your products’ existence or whether they make decisions helpful or hurtful to your products’ bottom line. As soon as Apple is interested in entering said market, however, you’re now a dirty competitor that needs to be pushed aside.
The iPhone isn’t pro-anything, other than vaguely enterprise. The issue is that they dropped matte screens from all their notebooks, even their “pro” lines, and their “pro” monitor.
I don’t think Apple is trying to cut Adobe out completely, but they have pulled a couple of dick moves in the past year that point to them, at the very least, just not giving a fuck about Adobe. Said dick moves include the sudden change in plans for Carbon 64 bit support (which is why CS4 will ship a 64-bit version for Windows but not for Mac OS) and they have also dragged their heels on getting Flash on the iPhone (Adobe has been saying for a while that it is ready to go and they just need Apple to get it into Safari).
Can anyone talk to me about backlit keyboards? Are they ever worthwhile? I touch type, so I’m not sure how useful it would be for me, ultimately, but I’d love to hear about if/when you’ve ever found backlighting useful.
I really am digging the new-look MacBook as an everyday carry-around system. I’m thinking that the 9400M will have enough juice for Starcraft 2 at 1280 x 800.
backlit keyboards aren’t practically useful at all unless you’re a literal hunt 'n pecker that has to look at the keyboard when typing… but they look kinda cool.
Apple could have done a better job about conveying their plans for 64-bit Carbon. (Hell, there isn’t much that Apple couldn’t do a better job of conveying to developers.) I don’t see that as some sort of particularly anti-Adobe move, however–and, frankly, Adobe should have realized that Carbon was on the way out. The writing has been on the wall.
Apple isn’t “dragging their heels” regarding Flash on the iPhone. Flash isn’t going into the iPhone browser, simple as that–not now, not tomorrow, not ever. They’ve been quite clear on that.
They also kneecapped the new Cinema Display by giving it inputs that only work with the newest laptops they just released.
“Want to use that sexy LED monitor with a PC… or even a Mac that you bought a week ago? FUCK YOU!” - Apple
And did they really need to introduce another fucking display port? Even ignoring the fact that they should be using HDMI, they invent a new port every time they refresh their systems these days. First mini-dvi, then micro-dvi on the Air, and now Mini DisplayPort…
Every time I start becoming slightly pro-Apple they do something user hostile that that just annoys the fuck out of me.
But i figured this was the inevitable response to what i had written, and while walking to my car after work i thought the difference is imo, that while MS of old wanted the MS PC platform to prosper, Apple just wants Apple to prosper. Even at the cost of third-party support.
If everything Apple did was perfect - every new release every year was a completely innovative (if monopolistic) new product, i’d have no problem with their business practices.
But Apple often stumbles - and unlike MS, they don’t really want anyone to take up the slack. If the solution cannot be Apple, than the solution cannot be. Everything has to be on Apple’s schedule, and if that means waiting two years for substantial upgrades because they want to maintain a 50% profit margin on every stupid thing they sell, than the Apple world will wait. What MS recognized was that even if they wanted to lock in their monopoly by direct dominance over OS and Office Apps, they still wanted the MS platform to thrive, as the bigger it all got, the bigger share MS’s take was. Whether through brilliance, stubbornness, incompetence or incapacity, Apple doesn’t really want the Apple platform to grow unless Apple is directly responsible for that growth.
No, there hasn’t been a specific, official announcement. Apple has, however, very clearly been giving Flash the cold shoulder. Jobs’s comments there are consistent with that message.
If Apple wanted Flash on the iPhone, it’d be there by now. They don’t.
backlit keyboards aren’t practically useful at all unless you’re a literal hunt 'n pecker that has to look at the keyboard when typing… but they look kinda cool.
Nah, they have uses. I’m generally a touch typer but sometimes I need to look down to orient myself and reset my brain if I’m making a lot of typos. If the room is dark, the backlit keys help a ton. And yeah, it looks cool.
What MS recognized was that even if they wanted to lock in their monopoly by direct dominance over OS and Office Apps, they still wanted the MS platform to thrive, as the bigger it all got, the bigger share MS’s take was. Whether through brilliance, stubbornness, incompetence or incapacity, Apple doesn’t really want the Apple platform to grow unless Apple is directly responsible for that growth.
Yeah, but Apple also sees the quagmire that Microsoft is in and doesn’t want to go there. If you open the platform up and allow everyone to make clones and whatever else will happen, you end up with Windows Vista and an entirely mediocre, beige product line.
Apple isn’t beige and has no desire to be. They are expensive and they are elitist. Love it or lump it.
I once read a quote that summed up the difference in behavior perfectly: Apple is a hardware company, and Microsoft is a software company. Every decision each company makes is based on this point of view. Any company that makes Mac-compatible hardware is, to Apple, a competitor; any company that makes Windows-compatible hardware is, to Microsoft, a potential new market.
By the same token, any new OS feature or application Apple makes is, to Microsoft, a threat to its dominance, whereas the same to Apple is… no big deal.
Microsoft makes decisions based on a need to get people to buy Microsoft software. Apple makes decisions based on a need to get people to buy Apple hardware products.
It’s also worth noting that I’ve found in the past that Apple laptops are generally less expensive than e.g. Dell with similar configurations. It’s that “with similar configurations” that’s the key. Even the lowly white Macbook (the one now selling for $999) has options like Firewire 400, Bluetooth, and a built-in camera that most folks don’t necessarily need.
The biggest price difference I saw was when I was looking for low-power SFF PCs right at the time the Mini was introduced. The cheapest complete solution I had found was around $700; the brand-new PPC Mini was just announced at the time, and the $499 version beat the $700 SFF PC on specs and cost $200 less.
Where Apple kills you, however, are on accessories. NEVER, EVER buy your RAM upgrade from Apple; they charge roughly 4x the market rate.
The problem, of course, is that something like half of all notebooks sell for less than the cheapest Mac. When an average Windows notebook costs $700, it’s sort of ridiculous to say that the $1299 Macbook is comparably priced.
