Apple has survived because of ideas. Now, hopefully, they'll have a chance to thrive from the same. Jobs demands and then enables ideas. The part of Apple I really admire is not the fancy packaging (although that's usually a nice treat), but the way somebody, somewhere at Apple put extra thought into the way a human would use their product.

It's about priorities, and that principle underscores the difference between Dell, Microsoft and Apple. Dell may rake in dough, but they'll always be resellers and not innovators. MS may also rake in the dough, but their priority is on maximizing returns, not maximizing the experience.

Thank God for Apple... I hope they are showing the business world a different path. I'm weary of all the bottom-line mentality in business these days.

The experience of opening up my first iPod was unlike anything I've ever known. Nobody pays that kind of attention to packaging. Heck, even my Shuffle was well-done.

It's sad they no longer package all the goodies (case, dock, remote) with the iPods. That was part of the fun too, kinda like "wow, I get all this and this and THIS, too!?"

Oh, and in my office, we're constantly getting new Apple products. The boxes (especially monitor boxes) are quickly snapped up. Everybody comments on how Apple makes the best boxes ever.

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Guest wrote:
Apple has survived because of ideas. Now, hopefully, they'll have a chance to thrive from the same. Jobs demands and then enables ideas. The part of Apple I really admire is not the fancy packaging (although that's usually a nice treat), but the way somebody, somewhere at Apple put extra thought into the way a human would use their product.

It's about priorities, and that principle underscores the difference between Dell, Microsoft and Apple. Dell may rake in dough, but they'll always be resellers and not innovators. MS may also rake in the dough, but their priority is on maximizing returns, not maximizing the experience.

Thank God for Apple... I hope they are showing the business world a different path. I'm weary of all the bottom-line mentality in business these days.

...which is presumably why in cooler climes the nominally flexible plastic of the ipod headphone leads goes almost solid

its not where you do it, its how you do it

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... SJ argues that the cost-savings aren't worth what you give up in terms of teamwork, communication, and the ability to get groups of people working together to bring a new idea to life," ...

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Guest wrote:
...which is presumably why in cooler climes the nominally flexible plastic of the ipod headphone leads goes almost solid

its not where you do it, its how you do it

Just to validate my comments: I own a Macintosh, I use several Macintoshes a day at work, I make use of Macintosh software, I have an iPod which continues to impress me, my blood pressure is much lower using OS X on a G3 that XP on the fastest Pentium.

But lets not go all high accolades here. Apple does great things, but how many of their current offering are products they bought and reworked: Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Shake, Logic, even many aspects of OS X. I know there are others. (DVD Studio Pro ver1 may have been one of the most inelegant pieces of software I have ever encountered.)

And looking at hardware. How long did we wait for a front mounted headphone jack? (mirror front G4s). Front mounted firewire and USB? The G5 towers are almost ridiculous. Yes, they look impressive, but impractical. They can't be rack mounted without cutting off the handles, with a hacksaw. The PCI slots are very awkward to access. If you can even finds the angle at which you have to set the screwdriver, chances are a screw is gonna drop inside the machine . As a pro machine, they should have at least one more PCI slot (especially since you lose one by using the higher end graphics cards). A single bus for all firewire ports requires a separate firewire card for many pro video applications. Only one FW 400 port on the rear means that the simple act of assigning one dedicated FW device to the machine means either skipping the extension provided by the Cinema Displays or having a cable permanently connected to the front of the machine. Only two internal drive bays is embarrassing. Not too many years ago, decent uncompressed video storage required a SCSI tower holding 8 to 12 36gig drives. Now I can use a two drive stripe of ATA or SATA drives. I have G4 towers configured this way, on a G5 I need to rely on some awkward 3rd party hack. Only one front accessible drive. I don't really need two optical drives but a place for a backup tape drive would be nice. Yes, the HP machines really do cost more, and we buy them. Something apple should consider in their drive for a simple product line up. The towers end up caught in this space between pro and consumer that leaves them less than ideal for either.

As a point of comparison, HP Windows workstations. I have a few of these at work for the software that requires it. These machines fit in a rack, either with an available rack-mount kit or simply by laying them on a generic rack shelf. There are plenty of easy to access PCI slots and NO screws. There is a simple hinged holder that allows easy but effective access to the cards and no chance of losing a screw. 5 internal drive bays. Dual channel SCSI 320 on the motherboard. SCSI is still the fastest solution for brute force local storage (think uncompressed dual stream 10 bit high definition).

Please don't comment that I can get an Xserve for rackmountability. That is a specific purpose machine, impractical for workstation and editing system use, especially with the lack of an AGP graphics slot.

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Mace wrote:

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... SJ argues that the cost-savings aren't worth what you give up in terms of teamwork, communication, and the ability to get groups of people working together to bring a new idea to life," ...

This goes against the common current belief to utilize the best brains from all parts of the world. Hence, Microsoft and IBM is expending a lot of resources in developing collaborative software.

Personally, I think Donald Norman deserves applause for being enough of a "mensch" to concede that whilst his own skills as a designer for Apple were pretty adequate, the skills of the Jobs/Ives/Schiller/Joswiak axis delivers better product.

In a world where people are always ready to snipe at those who came after them, Donald is obviously a professional with an objective sense of perspective. Good luck to him.

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Mace wrote:

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... SJ argues that the cost-savings aren't worth what you give up in terms of teamwork, communication, and the ability to get groups of people working together to bring a new idea to life," ...

This goes against the common current belief to utilize the best brains from all parts of the world. Hence, Microsoft and IBM is expending a lot of resources in developing collaborative software.

the tragedy of business is the plan that dies inside a man while he lives..........