Apple posts profit of $1.05B, ships nearly 2.3 million Macs

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/04/23/apple_posts_profit_of_1_05b_ships_nearly_2_3_million_macs.html

by terpua • 18 years ago

35 28 18 years ago

groovyone• 18 years ago

Franky I can see why. I used Vista for the very first time today at a clients. All I was trying to do was set up some email accounts and I realised that Microsoft had gone crazy during the years of development. I moved from Windows to Mac (and Linux) and don't regret it one bit. Now I've seen Vista I wonder how a company of that size can get something so wrong

aston3• 18 years ago

Vista hate is amazing lately. What does setting up email accounts have to do with the underlying OS, again?

xlnt3• 18 years ago

on Mac, a reasonably nice email client comes with the OS.

mrtron3• 18 years ago

A friend of mine just emailed 3 of her friends saying:

"I just bought a new BlackBerry, it requires Outlook, how do I get it on my computer with Vista"

For her it turned into a 5 hour process to install an email client built by the same company. I would say this has a great deal to do with the usability of the underlying OS.

gruseom2• 18 years ago

Now I've seen Vista I wonder how a company of that size can get something so wrong

I have a theory about this: it's the inevitable outcome of Microsoft's technical culture. Their culture - across many products and many years [1] - has been one of making complicated things more complicated. What happened with Vista was that, responding to criticism about security flaws, they set about addressing the problem in their same old way... and the runaway complexity finally blew up. They've used all the tricks in the book (and then some) making machines to make machines to create fingers to plug the millions of holes in the dyke. Now they've run out of fingers, and even slathering on the glitz can't hide the Rube Goldberg nature of their monstrosity. It's becoming plain even to end users who've never known anything but Windows.

If this is correct, then the Vista fiasco isn't really about Vista; if it weren't that it would have been something else. It's about what eventually happens when you make complicated things more complicated. It's a Sorcerer's Apprentice story. What's amazing is that they were able to hold it up for so long.

I really don't know if that's correct, but if it is, then I'm glad it's happening. I don't like complicated designs or code and I spend a lot of time trying to make mine simple. Someone (Spolsky?) said that for years at Microsoft, "computer-sciencey" was a term of derision used to diss people like me - people who care about finding the simpler, more powerful idea, or the beautiful, most essential design. Watching this implosion (if that's what it is) is satisfying, and not only because of Schadenfreude. For one thing, it confirms several fundamental beliefs (such as that runaway complexity is unsustainable). For another, MS had a huge influence on the software development world, one which has been pernicious in this respect. They didn't just legitimize the idea of making complicated things more complicated, they standardized it. (Look at MSDN Magazine: a new flavor every month and yet they're all the same.) The Vista fiasco is going to have a number of long-term effects; perhaps one will be to lessen this influence, and increase that of technical cultures in which design is valued.

[1] When .NET came out, I was struck by how much simpler it was than the MS stack that preceded it, which was a hideous mess. I wondered whether they had taken a new turn; subsequently it became clear that they hadn't. The better-designed parts of .NET (C#, the core libraries, and the CLR) were an anomaly. Even the auxiliary parts of .NET were done the same old way, as has most subsequent stuff I've seen. I think what happened was that MS brought in some new, more competent people in the late 90s (the most prominent of whom was Hejlsberg). The stuff they built and/or influenced was better. But they didn't change the culture, nor could they have. And the culture always wins in the end.

angstrom• 18 years ago

Their culture - across many products and many years - has been one of making complicated things more complicated.

That's just the side effect of the backwards compatibility which proved so successful throughout the 90s, not as a design or marketing goal I assure you.

There's a limit to how backward compatible you can be without stepping on the feet of the applications that came before while still pushing innovative new ideas.

damon• 18 years ago

"Now I've seen Vista I wonder how a company of that size can get something so wrong"

Perhaps because it's a company of that size.

aupajo• 18 years ago

Agreed, I've often wondered about the division of labour at MS HQ. Someone told me today that there is a dedicated team of around 50 people just devoted to managing the "Start" button.

A software idea can be built many ways and usually more than one of these will be "right". But the moment you have a group of people with equal control and conflicting "right" ideas, you end up with something quite decidedly "wrong".

Small core development teams, with one visionary produces better, more usable software. For me, I will always take a product that feels easier to use than one overstuffed with obscure features. Hence, I use a Mac as my primary machine (also flit between Debian and occasionally XP).

nazgulnarsil• 18 years ago

companies are capitalizing on the huge subset of windows users who want a more OSX like experience but either can't (work) or won't (expense) get an apple.

chris_l• 18 years ago

I just bought a 3-year-old used iBook G4, that the previous owner had upgraded RAM and HD for, and the performance is just fine (I don't play games or do heavy media stuff). It cost half of what my new cheapo PC laptop did and it seems like quite an improvement. So I don't think that the price should be an excuse.

mdemare• 18 years ago

First gen macbooks should be quite affordable now.

kleevr• 18 years ago

I recently got a laptop from CDW from work with a Vista install. It would only boot up half-way, then start over... infinite boot loop. I spent five minutes checking the BIOS details, before I broke the labeling on the XP downgrade CD and did LiteStep shell replacement.

Alex3917• 18 years ago

Cramer's analysis of how kids view macs these days is amazing:

http://www.thestreet.com/video/10413205/index.html?puc=jjcho...

"[PCs] are not computers. Those are things that parents use. They are not computers. They are these devices that parents got because maybe they got talked into it or because they didn't understand what was cool, but they are not computers. A computer is a mac. Like an iPod is your music device, a mac is your computer, and these other things are just things that are from another day. They might as well be typewriters to these kids. [...] It only takes one session of watching your kids. The other companies that make these devices are no longer relevant."

LPTS• 18 years ago

That's a great quote.

In the same vein, I've been saying lately that people who think the iPhone is just one phone among many are just like people who thought the a computer was just another typewriter.

Ohh, wow. I just said something by Jim "Bear Sterns is fine" Cramer was great. A broken clock and all that.

axod2• 18 years ago

"people who think the iPhone is just one phone among many"

The funny thing is, I use my iPhone maybe 5% to make voice calls. For me it's an ultra-portable PC, mainly used for email+web. So when people do say things like "It's just a phone", they really do completely miss the point.

databus• 18 years ago

This works out to be around 3.5% of world wide pc unit shipments for '08.

gpurrenhage• 18 years ago

The article is talking about one quarter, not all of '08. Source?

Apple posts profit of $1.05B, ships nearly 2.3 million Macs

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