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Lango--you're correct about the higher margins from selling 'em as add-ons, but you're incorrect about the buyers being suckers since it "just adds the weight right back in".
What do people use CD/DVD drives for nowadays?
--installing retail software (primarily "big ticket" titles like OS X, Office, Photoshop, etc, as opposed to "smaller" titles which I assume are mostly downloaded as shareware/etc these days)
--backing up hard drives
--ripping CDs/video DVDs
--watching DVD movies
Now, honestly, how many of the first three things are done anywhere except from your office/home office/desk/etc? If you're sitting at your "main workstation" when performing these tasks anyway, having an external drive is no big deal. I can't imagine installing Adobe Creative Suite 3 while commuting to work by bus/subway anyway...and that's where the weight/bulk savings are key.
Now, the fourth one (watching DVD movies) is obviously a case where it's commonly done on the plane/bus/train where having an *internal* DVD is really the only practical way of doing so, but I imagine that the market for such a model wouldn't be mobile-DVD-watchers anyway (or they would go for a different laptop, natch!)
Baldrick--you have a good point, but remember that it's not just the thickness factor, it's also weight (even a half-pound lighter can make a difference when carrying a laptop around) and battery life (I dunno if optical drives use up any battery life when they're not being used, but some of the extra space could go towards a larger batter...although that would also cancel out some of the weight savings...)
The delay in hi-def DVD burners in new Macs is, no doubt, due to the same problem that the consumer hi-def market is having: No one wants to deal with buying the "wrong" format between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. It's even worse in the laptop market, since you only have room for one or the other.
Until these guys get their heads out of their asses and start producing a DVD player/burner that can handle BOTH formats, it's gonna be slow going...
Welcome back, dilleet! Looking forward to arguing about meaningless and not-so-meaningless stuff with you for many moons to come :)
Dilleet--just checked in and read your news...not sure what to say other than good luck and our prayers (myself, Mrs. Djinn and Baby Djinn) are with you.
If it wasn't for Entourage, I would've abandoned Office years ago. Unfortunately, I absolutely *hate* the way OS X Mail/Address Book/iCal integrate (that is, the info integrates well, but I hate the separate-app interfaces).
I played around with someting called CRM4Mac, but it isn't even close. I've returned to Entourage, and that's where I'm staying for the forseeable future.
Bootz--well, my congressman is the utterly useless Joe Knollenberg, who apparently voted for the thing.
For those who think I'm a blind partisan, I hereby state that the Democrats f*cked up on this one but good. Then again, the Republicans *also* f*cked up on it as well (with one exception). Yeah, it should be two exceptions but I don't count Ron Paul as a Republican, since he's really a Libertarian.
So lemme get this straight:
I'm a reseller for a web hosting service.
Web hosting services usually also provide email service for their clients.
So, if one of my clients sends an "inappropriate" email attachment to someone else, under this law, either I (or at the very least, the hosting services) would be charged?
Jim--
agree that it sucks, but I'm pretty sure that they were clear about the final version being Leopard-only right from the original announcement.
Good luck; prayers with you, etc.
Lango--Ya got me...remember that even those 9% of displays that *are* still at 800x600 are hardly likely to be used by media/web-savvy types.
Actually, Apple's lowest resolution is 1280x800 (except for the iPhone, of course, which doesn't really count in this case).
Semi-OT: Screen resolution update:
As of this month, 800x600 resolution usage appears to have finally fallen below the 10% mark:
http://www.brainwrap.com/faq/screen_resolution.html
Of course, this doesn't take into account smartphones/etc, but assuming that the iPhone and other "zoom to fit" mobile browsers take over the mobile market, this becomes somewhat irrelevant (I know plenty of developers are making special iPhone-friendly versions of their sites, but at least you don't *have* to do so).
1024x768, which peaked at 57% of the market 2 years ago, is already receding as higher-res widescreen displays take over.
Jan '09, I think you mean :)
Very interesting that they've chosen to release Bento through the FileMaker division instead of rolling it into iWork. For that matter, I've never quite understood why FileMaker hasn't been reabsorbed into the company as a whole. I can't imagine that they're still concerned about the Apple brand being considered "unfriendly" to businesses? I guess FM has always been kind of a strange bird, not quite fitting into anything else Apple does.
Tomm--that's hilarious, considering that I don't even have the box set to show (nothing against you, I just like to maximize reading space)
Anyone else's stomach feeling queasy after that rollercoaster?
I just held on with both hands, fortunately.
Ace--you have GOT to be kidding me.
Wow.
Why not bring up the "flaming PowerBook 5300" while you're at it?
Roni/Tex--I guess I should've put a winky face at the end ;)
No, I didn't seriously think they would blow the computer up :)
Pretty impressive and/or creepy stuff, however (depending on your POV).
"a remote device to destroy the hard drive"???
Good grief.
Kudos to Apple for these deals, but is it really necessary to implant a remote-controlled explosive in the casing? Yeesh. Talk about Mission Impossible...
Dilleet--considering that my wife and I own a few shares, I'd feel pretty damned good about it! :)
Or were you asking my take on whether that's likely? Dunno, but it certainly sounds feasible based on everything we've read, seen and otherwise know about.
Tex--better than that; if you check the full 10-year period, there's only two years where the Dec. quarter was worse than the Sept. quarter (the disastrous holiday-2000 quarter, where Jobs *completely* misread the Napster/MP3/CD-RW phenomenon, and the post-9/11 holiday-2001 quarter, where the dip needs no explanation).
In other words, aside from these two special cases, Apple's holiday quarter has always *at least* equalled and usually exceeded the September quarter :)
A beautiful sales graph:
More details here:
http://www.systemshootouts.org/mac_sales.html
More fun with statistics: According to the conference call yesterday, digital downloads now make up 17% of ALL (legal) music sold globally.
iTunes still supposedly holds 85% of the (legal) digital download market in the U.S. Assuming that it's a bit lower--say, 70%--globally, that means that Apple now sells 12% of all legally-sold music worldwide.
Think about that for a moment.
http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/10/23/itunes.3b.songs.sold/
I missed out on the hoopla yesterday, but just in case no one else has noted it yet:
HP Market Cap: $133 billion
Intel Market Cap: $154 billion
IBM Market Cap: $155 billion
Apple market cap: $161 billion
Google market cap: $207 billion
Microsoft market cap: $290 billion
Wow.
That is all.
I'm too tired to check right now--does Leopard include the long-awaited "independent resolution" interface that'll let me make everything the size I want it without changing the actual screen resolution?
I still use Classic on my G5 for exactly one program: VSE BeFound, a search engine optimization & batch-submission program from a lonnnng time ago.
I've yet to find an OS X equivalent that works as well, although I understand there are several good similar programs on Windows, so perhaps I'll start using Parallels after all...
Hey all...been out of the loop for a bit, TONS of developments the past few days...but no one has commented on what's by far the single most significant one:
Classic is DEAD.
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20071018012603481
Mac OS X 10.5 does not support the Classic (Mac OS 9 runtime) environment.
A moment of silence, please.
Now gimme my Leopard!
Roni--wow, neat! :)
Louis--boy, won't the shareholders at Appell Pete Corp (OTC) - APPL be disappointed when they realize their company doesn't have a $160 billion market cap?
http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=squote&cb=1191899728&symbol=APPL
KCMW--I agree 100%. The last thing the Mac mini needs to be is even SMALLER, at least given the fact that it already uses a 2.5" HDD (which means the drive is slower).
It might make sense if they went *both* ways with it (ie, replaced the current mini with a "nano" version below it and a slightly larger version above it).
Roni--no sales tax in Oregon? How do they make up for it--higher income/property tax?
Funny that you should mention the Carl Sagan incident--my wife and I happen to be watching "Cosmos" on DVD (newly restored, with updated footage, etc etc).
Thirty-odd years later, it's still brilliant, and my sadness at the loss of Sagan (BHA incident notwithstanding) only grows.
I've had WLD on iggy for quite awhile now...sounds like he's begging for others to do the same? Anyone want to fill me in, or shouldn't I bother asking?
Thanks, I'll check it out. At the moment I'm putting the finishing touches on a special addition: a complete chart/graph of Apple's computer sales for EVERY QUARTER SINCE 1976!
Admittedly, some info will be missing or estimated, but I think it'll be well worth checking out anyway.
Whoops! Nice catch; fixed.
Actually, I suppose an Acer logo would make more sense, since they just announced a Gateway buyout...
System Shootouts update: $1,300 Slimline Desktops: 20" iMac vs. Gateway One:
http://www.systemshootouts.org/shootouts/desktop/2007/0927_dt1300.html
Hmmm...the raging debate continues, I suppose...
I guess it depends on the type of content on the site. If it's primarily text-based, "liquid layout" is probably a better way to go. If it's heavily graphic (as in Apple's case), I suppose you're correct, as the graphics will remain the same size regardless of the "stretchiness" of the page.
All I know is that with the previous design, there was no product wrapping for me; with the new design, there is. Both versions were/are "locked" so it's the change in layout/font settings that are causing the wrapping.
Tomm--is this really news? I thought it was already generally known that the breakdown is something like 65-70% to the labels, 30-35% to Apple, of which overhead/bandwidth/etc is assumed to be around 25%.
As far as I know, it's always been "common knowledge" that Apple nets around $0.05-0.10 per song, which would mean, at 3 billion sold, they've profited by somewhere around $150-$300 million.
Of course, many of those songs were less than $0.99 each--14 songs in a $9.99 album brings each one down to $0.71--but still, a very nice (if modest, by corporate standards) revenue flow.
OK, now it's displaying properly--I had to reduce the "minimum font size" option in Camino from 12 to 10.
As KCMW says, however, this is irritating--I don't have the greatest eyesight in the world, so I need my text a bit larger than average.
Apple's mistake here isn't in the font settings, it's in "locking" the overall width of the page down to 1024x768, which forces the text to wrap around when the font size is larger...which in turn forces the accompanying image to wrap as well.
Yofal--nope, even down-shifting the font size doesn't change it (all that does is shrink the text, but the wrapping continues).
Someone made a pretty bad coding error here for such a major company which stresses design/layout so highly...