Apple stock falls on news of a paradigm shift and the shipping of Apple TV.

Seriously this is good news.

This is very good news. People are seeing the light and understanding Vista is not the answer but OSX is.

It might even be more obvious seeing it from outside the anglo-saxon world. Take the iPhone, for instance. News about it appeared in media all around. I can mention countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Portugal and Brazil as they are the ones I read news from on a regular basis. I cannot recall a time when news from Apple should have caused such a response from media. And not only in the US or UK, mind you.
If I'd go a little closer to myself, I can mention that my whole family is on Macs now, included my former Mac-hating younger brother who bought a MacBook this year! I had actually gving him up, so judge about my surprise when I heard that!
I guess everyone who's been a Mac-user over some years, have had their ups and downs, hoping for the downfall of the Empire and that the Mac should be on the rise, thus making our lives a little easier, but this time I have seriously begun to suspect that it is going up.
Yesterday I read in one of Norway's larger papers how you could synch your mobile phones on the Mac - but not on Vista! And earlier, they have normally been at the best lukewarm regarding everything Apple, trying their best to find something negative to say about iPods and talking up Creative, for instance.
Yes, I definitely think something is changing now...

I love my Macs; my iPod; my AAPL stock. But I will not be satisfied until we see the day when not one poor soul has to boot up into Windows, ever again.

That could be a while.....

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Anonymous wrote:
I love my Macs; my iPod; my AAPL stock. But I will not be satisfied until we see the day when not one poor soul has to boot up into Windows, ever again.

That could be a while.....

yes; it is just like the eradication of polio... Perhaps World Health Organisation should step in!

I'm going to be the voice of dissent. I, for one, do not dream of a Mac-centric planet.

Why? I just don't have enough time for dealing with noob questions. I don't object to it, I'm just too time-poor to be a help desk operator without being paid for it.

I've got too many important things to do. Like, you know, Command & Conquer, Warhammer 40k... you know, the important stuff.

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coaten wrote:
I'm going to be the voice of dissent. I, for one, do not dream of a Mac-centric planet.

Why? I just don't have enough time for dealing with noob questions.....

how is a mac saving me on hardware costs when a hard drive upgrade costs 70% more than with other manufacturers?

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Anonymous wrote:
how is a mac saving me on hardware costs when a hard drive upgrade costs 70% more than with other manufacturers?

We should welcome any new Mac users. It's a Mac so they won't be new for long. My experience is that those new to the Mac, whether brand new to computers or switchers soon catch on to what Mac OS is all about.

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iJack wrote:

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coaten wrote:
I'm going to be the voice of dissent. I, for one, do not dream of a Mac-centric planet.

Why? I just don't have enough time for dealing with noob questions.....

You beat me to the punch. I already don't like it. I frequent CraigsList Apple Forum several times a day, and have noticed a quickening in Switchers, who seem to be either dumber, or more demanding than regular old Mac noobs. I liked it just fine when we were alone in the world.

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Guest wrote:

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iJack wrote:

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coaten wrote:
I'm going to be the voice of dissent. I, for one, do not dream of a Mac-centric planet.

Why? I just don't have enough time for dealing with noob questions.....

You beat me to the punch. I already don't like it. I frequent CraigsList Apple Forum several times a day, and have noticed a quickening in Switchers, who seem to be either dumber, or more demanding than regular old Mac noobs. I liked it just fine when we were alone in the world.

How very elitist. I, for one, welcome anyone who decides to make the Big Switch. We certainly shouldn't begrudge someone a bit of time and patience if he or she needs an extra helping hand to get started. Don't we want people to see the Mac community as a friendly, inviting one?

I don't think that's the phrase you want to use. A sea change is not a change in the direction or flow of the tide. Shakespeare used the term when describing the transformation of a submerged corpse.
As a longtime Mac user, I do miss the days when the tech support staff didn't have much to do and could focus on my issues. No service contracts/genius appts/long lines of 13 year olds at the Apple Store. Didn't they actually answer their phones and talk to you back then?

So I can buy an Apple computer without any hard drive in it? I know that Dell offers me this flexibility. Can I also buy a Mac without a video card in it and then get the video card I want and put it in myself?

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iJack wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:
how is a mac saving me on hardware costs when a hard drive upgrade costs 70% more than with other manufacturers?

You don't have to upgrade with a drive from Apple, you know. A hard drive is a hard drive.

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Emperor Gates wrote:
I feel a strange disturbance in The Force.

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Guest wrote:
I love my Macs; my iPod; my AAPL stock. But I will not be satisfied until we see the day when not one poor soul has to boot up into Windows, ever again.

That could be a while.....

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Guest wrote:
So I can buy an Apple computer without any hard drive in it? I know that Dell offers me this flexibility. Can I also buy a Mac without a video card in it and then get the video card I want and put it in myself?

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iJack wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:
how is a mac saving me on hardware costs when a hard drive upgrade costs 70% more than with other manufacturers?

You don't have to upgrade with a drive from Apple, you know. A hard drive is a hard drive.

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Guest wrote:
No, you cannot customize a Mac like that. That's sort of the point of Apple's ecosystem. It's very closed and very controlled. One of the great magic tricks Apple has pulled is convincing its customer base that limiting oneself to Apple-only products results in a better life. Some people eat it up.

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Anonymous wrote:
No, you cannot customize a Mac like that. That's sort of the point of Apple's ecosystem. It's very closed and very controlled. One of the great magic tricks Apple has pulled is convincing its customer base that limiting oneself to Apple-only products results in a better life. Some people eat it up.

I remember the original iMac. It certainly did go poof when my roommate in college bought one. My parents got me a laptop from Toshiba instead. My school was not very PC friendly and actually encouraged students to buy the iMac with discounts in the school store... that's where my roommate got his. I plugged in my laptop and was on the internet after about 10 minutes. Even with the school's IT staff doing the work it took them over a month to get the computer to work on the network.

I get making life easier for people who aren't tech savvy, and having the ability to buy a computer that just works, which is why nearly every computer manufacturer that sells direct to consumers has such lines. But Apple took that a step farther and put that line of computer into their closed ecosystem, and with each peripheral they develop they seek further close the gates of their walled garden. Precisely the people who these devices and computers are marketed towards (mass consumers who are non-techies) are the same people who do not understand what the implications of buying into such a closed system are, or that such a closed system even exists. It is when their needs outgrow the system and they want incremental upgrades without having to shell out the big bucks for a whole new system that this mass consumer is really hurt by Apple's large corporation anti-consumer tactics. The iPod is a great example. It took about 4 generations of the product for them to finally offer a battery replacement service, prior to which Apple support would simply tell you to buy a new iPod if your battery failed. Which is about the amount of time it took for the device to go through one life-cycle in mass consumers hands. Apple along with lithium-ion battery manufacturers always knew that the lifespan for the batteries was about 18 months with a 20% loss in capacity in the first 12. This, however, is not common knowledge in the consumer mainstream, and it was the closed ecosystem of the iPod that prevented them (and still does!) from walking into a Radio Shack to get a new battery for 20 bucks.

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gslusher wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:
No, you cannot customize a Mac like that. That's sort of the point of Apple's ecosystem. It's very closed and very controlled. One of the great magic tricks Apple has pulled is convincing its customer base that limiting oneself to Apple-only products results in a better life. Some people eat it up.

Ah, yet another "guest" who knows little about Macs--or, it would seem, the realities of the computer market.

First, while some (not all!) PCs are "customizable," how many buyers actually take advantage of such options? Don't most people buy an off-the-shelf PC?

Second, hardware functionality and interoperability is critical for most people. They don't want to spend a lot of time getting a graphics card to work correctly (yes, I know that it's not as much of a problem now as it used to be).

When Apple started making computers, they were pretty much "build-to-order"--or, more commonly, "finish it yourself." The Apple II series was very flexible. In 1984, Apple introduced two new computers that completely reversed that concept--the Apple //c and the Macintosh.

Later, Apple went through a period where they had a bewildering array of models and options that confused buyers (they introduced nearly 50 Performa models over a period of four years). When Jobs came back to Apple, one of his first actions was to reduce the product line. He also put into motion a project to revamp his original concept for the Mac: a computer that people could take out of the box, plug in the keyboard, mouse, phone line (before the days of DSL and cable modems), and power, push the "ON" button and **POOF!** the computer boots and, minutes later, they're on the Internet, writing documents, whatever. Thus was born the iMac. It became the iconical "home computer," even though it was far from the best selling. (I'm listening to a mystery audiobook by Peter Robinson, published in 2000. In it, Robinson refers to a "tangerine iMac," probably because that's what he had. Have you read/heard a reference to a PC by brand/model name in fiction?)

Today, Apple has three lines of desktop computers. Two are closed systems for most customers (most of whom buy an iMac) and the Mac Pro for those who need to customize their computers.

Here are a few reasons that I think that Apple is more successful these days:

* marketing, sporting an "Apple" brand product seems to be the "in" thing

* huge profits from sales of iPods and iTunes online music

* adoption of the monolithic Intel processor

* recent Microsoft failings: Vista, viruses, and nothing new from this software behemoth

* being able to run Windows on a Mac using Parallels and other virtual machine software

* Mac OS X runs BSD/*nix which makes the Mac a popular machine with software developers (again, it's that "in" thing.)