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Apple plans mystery "product transition" by end of September

appleinsider.com — During his quarterly financial results call, Apple's chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer revealed that the company will make a key "product transition" that cuts back on its profit margins to help shut out rivals.

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  • DiGiC, on 07/22/2008, -27/+8*Prays for netbook Mac to kick eee PC's ass!*
    • elister, on 07/22/2008, -6/+8Wont happen. Eee PC is too cheap and too basic, Apple would have to price it at 400-500$ for the exact same thing and it might have to shave features (no SD slot, no WiMax, etc) in order to get it that low. You're better off with an iPhone or Touch.

      • Norumeni, on 07/22/2008, -4/+11No Apple notebook that I'm aware of has an SD slot or freakin wimax, so what do you mean by 'shave features" when they're already non existent?
      • cmsjustin, on 07/22/2008, -2/+3I think he was referring to the Apple sub-notebook missing a lot of the features that are in the Eee PC.

        However, you could make the argument that the iPhone is less functional than a Windows Mobile phone, lacking features such as tethering and multimedia messaging, but we all know how that turned out.
    • specialbuddy1, on 07/22/2008, -6/+6I would still get the eee
      • BoonTobias, on 07/22/2008, -2/+5and store what, 10 jpgs and 5 mp3s on that *****?
      • specialbuddy1, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1I could just buy the Macbook Air with 64gb of ssd for 2600 dollars or buy 5 eee pc's with 20 gb ssd. I have a 160gb drive right now that isn't full and if I need storage then I'll just get a server or a storage drive that can be on the network.
    • Charlotte_Web, on 07/22/2008, -2/+5I'm betting this is an iPhone announcement.

      Trying to capture the PC market is such an uphill battle, trying to win over developers and hardware manufacturers and corporate IT folks. The MP3 market, Apple took by storm because an MP3 player is a stand-alone. Now, they are poised to take the larger and much more lucrative cell phone market by storm.

      Right now, the cell phone market has no concept of platform lock-in. Apple, having some 30 years in the computer industry, completely understands platform lock-in. Microsoft got the jump on Apple in the corporate IT market and shut Apple out. And, for many years, Apple had the education market sewn up; schools couldn't turn their backs on the enormous investment in Apple software and peripherals they had.

      The iPhone will have hooks into EVERYTHING you do (because it's basically a computer in your pocket). Good luck trying to drop the iPhone as your cell; it'll be as difficult as switching computer platforms.
    • OffPiste, on 07/23/2008, -3/+2Naaaaa, it's probably a new widget that shows the spread of Stevie's cancer. I hear he's down to 89 pounds. Time to sell Apple short.
  • bedouin, on 07/22/2008, -12/+153Mac Mini Tower please.
    • airwalkery2k, on 07/22/2008, -1/+38I'd call it... the Mac Mini Extra Large Edition.
    • punkcat, on 07/22/2008, -2/+17Mac Bigini
    • filefly, on 07/22/2008, -3/+82Big Mac!

      (too subtle?)
      • darkfish, on 07/22/2008, -6/+1No. That one was taken a long time ago - Mac Plus circa 1986. It had 1MB RAM, a breakthrough at the time.
      • punkcat, on 07/22/2008, -3/+1was the 512k mac that was called the "fat mac."


      • isimon42o, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1I literally just saw an ad on the right for a big mac and a coke while viewing this
      • tim710, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1@isimon42o
        Literally? As opposed to... metaphorically?
      • t0x2c, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1@tim
        Possibly hallucinatory?
    • SolituSneiku, on 07/22/2008, -3/+3Going to be a Mac Pro that isn't Pro
      • jzuska, on 07/22/2008, -1/+1What?
      • schneb, on 07/22/2008, -0/+13He means a MacProsumer. Something in the gap between a Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. Desired for years--ignored for just as long.
      • GoldenChaos, on 07/22/2008, -3/+9You mean the iMac? That would qualify as Apple's "consumer" line.
      • P373Y, on 07/22/2008, -0/+8he means a mac tower that doesent have a million cores and costs a billion dollars
    • TreatsTheBear, on 07/22/2008, -14/+8It's called a Hackintosh. Build one.
      • FreshPineSent, on 07/22/2008, -6/+27It's called a dick. Suck one.
      • ibone, on 07/22/2008, -6/+2I'm sure you have been sucking on plenty already.
      • humperdinck, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2Buried for failure to begin condescending post with "Ummm".
    • schneb, on 07/22/2008, -2/+11So ridiculous that Apple does not have a half-height MacPro or a Mini Tower.

      The best thing about the Pystar debacle is that it showed Apple an untapped market that they blinded their eyes to. The Pro-sumer. Apple has screwed the Pro-sumer in every way they could--starting with iMovie 08 and continuing with the Mac Mini-->Mac Pro gap!!

      I had a Mac Pro 8-core for about 5 days and sent it back. It was too much for what I needed to do, too big, and too heavy and too expensive. I have decided to wait till the end of the year. Maybe they will smarten up.
      • HoratioHellpop, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1//I had a Mac Pro 8-core for about 5 days and sent it back.//

        In all seriousness ... do they allow you to do that? Buy a Mac, try it, don't like it, you can get your money back?
      • jasmus, on 07/22/2008, -1/+5If it was too expensive, why did you buy it. The size and weight info is also freely available. This one i am genuinely curious about, how did iMovie 08 screw you over? I don't get it when people say Apple is screwing them over because they dont' make a product they'd like to buy. Aston Martin have been screwing me over for years because they don't make a car in my price range. They should start doing it, because I know better than them.
      • roberthazelby, on 07/22/2008, -0/+8Too heavy?! What on earth were you trying to do with it?! Surely once it's placed wherever you're going to use it, then it stays there.

        Maybe you could have attached wheels to it, and trundled it around from location to location? ;)
      • ParkourRunner, on 07/22/2008, -2/+5iMovie '08 is a dumbed downed kiddy product even compared to iMovie HD. It is pretty much useless.
      • sp1keNARF, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1why does it need to be a tower to be pro-sumer?
      • P373Y, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3really imovie 08 is kinda a step back compared to hd. you can still get hd from apple for free
        http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.h ...
      • thunderer, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2Final Cut Express is essentially the pro-sumer version of iMovie. Most of the bells and whistles of the pro app, without the massive price tag.
    • mCanada, on 07/22/2008, -0/+11Return to the Apple IIe with a Q6600 in it. Hi def Oregon trail bitches! Bets?
    • BobOki, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4How about they call it the missing device in their lineup: Macintosh.
      As we don't currently have one of those.
      Mac mini
      imac
      missing
      mac pro
    • vexadril, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Mini tower yeah!! I've got a stack of PCI cards from the '90s I'm just dying to use...
    • diggimator, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1It's about time, too. Mac minis haven't been updated in a long while:
      http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac_mini Time for a new round of hardware beta testing?
  • dizzy113, on 07/22/2008, -4/+38I'm okay with my PC, but would like to get a new macbook and waiting for the refresh of those before getting one...so thats my hope.
  • kibbledbits, on 07/22/2008, -9/+34I'm expecting macbooks but I'm thinking it's likely a touchscreen internet portable computer.
    • Haax, on 07/22/2008, -10/+41That's already out. it's called the iPhone or iPod Touch.
      • Meep3D, on 07/22/2008, -2/+5... of a decent size.
      • reddog093, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4I think he's thinking of something more along the lines of an Apple-made, lower-end version of a modbook.
      • hardeep1singh, on 07/22/2008, -4/+1How about coming out with a Mac DVD, lets see how it fares against Vista. :D
      • dandylion13, on 07/22/2008, -4/+2Yeah, the iPhone/Touch is it. Everyone thought it would be larger device (book page sized) but the market has decided otherwise. There is a market for a tablet sized device (I want one!), but it's purely a niche market.

        A tablet would be too low powered to replace a laptop, and not conveniently portable enough to replace an iPhone sized device. It would be awkwardly positioned.
    • bicycleman, on 07/23/2008, -2/+2Actually dumbass it's called a Tablet PC and over my dead body, possibly Steve Job's, they will end up telling the world they invented the Tablet PC. If Apple would stop painting it's corporate buildings's windows black and look out side the would realize that PC's have had the Tablet PC for over 10 years.
      • Macintoshreader, on 07/26/2008, -0/+0Tablet PCs are a failure and outdated technology, which is why Apple never entered the market and innovated. Multi-touch belongs in truly portable devices like the iPhone, not on laptops because it doesn't offer any benefit.

        Tablet PCs suck, get over it.
  • elister, on 07/22/2008, -19/+2Sure this doesn't have anything to do with Apple buying chipmaker PA Semi iPhone? If so, then have fun trying to get all 500 apps on the iPhone store ported to the new chipset. Welcome to the world of Windows Mobile! (ARM, Xscale, Omap, Etc). Having Atom or ARM based chipsets on the iPhone would make for porting those apps over to Windows Mobile a bit easier and have more compatibility amongst competing devices. However, if you could just as easily get this app for BlackBerry or HTC, why would you want to buy an iPhone?

    PA Semi makes low powered chips, ideal for iPhone or iPod, not so good if your trying to run a MacBook or Desktop. So you can pretty much cross out a revamp for

    Its either that or they plan to fully phase out normal iPods with Touch Variations.
    • bigsteve, on 07/22/2008, -0/+8The iPhone is already an ARM platform. Apps made for the iPhone are written in Obj C, and heavily utilize a fairly broad-reaching set of APIs (Cocoa Touch, the Core libraries, etc.) Porting iPhone apps to other platforms would be very difficult considering the very unique hardware in the iPhone (multi touch screen that many apps make heavy use of, accelerometer, etc.)
    • palmer, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1"not so good if your trying to run a MacBook"

      Your trying?
  • Erred, on 07/22/2008, -18/+0Me want new laptop now! Heheheh.
  • FatBurger, on 07/22/2008, -24/+79"Shut out rivals"? Isn't that what Microsoft got in trouble for?
    • Laminarcissus, on 07/22/2008, -9/+56Yes, and Apple has shown over and over that they have *no* interest in restricting markets, limiting their customers' freedom of choice, or forcing anyone to do anything using any source of power they might have in the manufacturing, marketing, or distribution chain.

      (Sorry, do I need a sarcasm tag here? I'm never sure)
      • kevdotbadger, on 07/22/2008, -2/+14I'll add them just incase

        [/sarcasm]
      • rimantas, on 07/22/2008, -12/+7Invalid. End tag without start tag.
      • Syphon8, on 07/22/2008, -4/+1[sarcasm /]
      • Macintoshreader, on 07/26/2008, -0/+0Microsoft is an expert on shutting rivals. The perfect example is Netscape and the fact that they buy corporations, use their technology and then they make them disappear. Another thing is that they force consumers to buy the newest version of their products by eliminating support for the one before that.

        Since you were being sarcastic, can you name the companies that Apple has shut down?
    • umbrellainabin, on 07/22/2008, -13/+5yea but noone likes microsoft so thats ok
      • mrgermy, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2"no one" is two words. Noone looks like some sort of WoW character name.
    • KibibyteBrain, on 07/22/2008, -5/+23Yes, but there were two key differences. The first is that Microsoft actually achieved this in reality. The second was that as it got more mature in the 90s, it would often use business strategy and not actual product improvements to destroy competition. It would at least appear that Apple is trying to compete directly with its competition...for now.
      • TxAggie08, on 07/22/2008, -6/+5Until they succeed like Microsoft and start doing the same thing.
      • Laminarcissus, on 07/22/2008, -2/+11Not allowing their own customers to load any applications they want onto the iPhone (to pick one example) is Apple not shutting out rivals? Developers have to go through them, and sell it in their store, and if they don't like you you're iScrewed?

        Even Microsoft's certification program for Windows Mobile is optional for chrissake.

        If they were competing, they would make iPhone an open to everyone (including their customers) and then make better applications than everyone else and sell them.

        It takes somebody really draconian to make Microsoft look open.
    • radiofrequency, on 07/22/2008, -10/+5Microsoft did it illegally.
    • inkswamp, on 07/22/2008, -5/+7A comment like that means you're either trolling or completely ignorant of what Microsoft did to get dragged into court. Either way, it's embarrassing for you so why make such a comment? Are you that desperate for attention or is Wikipedia's summary of Microsoft's monopoly hearings too much on an intellectual challenge for you to read?
      • OffPiste, on 07/23/2008, -2/+1Maybe she prefers to only read primary source material. Wikipedia? rolls eyes.
      • inkswamp, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2Yeah, primary sources would be great in a perfect world, but Wikipedia is the quickest way to get a rough idea about anything in general. Why anyone would eschew that in favor of ignorance is beyond me.

        Anyway, sources aside, it would take no more than five minutes to look up MS's monopoly hearings online. Point is, it's not hard to be informed.
    • digitalpencil, on 07/22/2008, -2/+6tbf, all companies attempt to 'shut out rivals', it's just business. leveraging an illegally obtained monopoly to make it impossible for competing firms to operate within their sector is what MS got in trouble for..
    • solistus, on 07/22/2008, -3/+3Microsoft got in trouble for 'shutting out rivals' by means of illegal practices. The Apple CFO is talking about shutting out rivals by cutting prices to a point that competitors can't match. That's the good, pro-consumer kind of competition.
      • Syphon8, on 07/22/2008, -1/+3Apple? Cut prices? Hah.
      • solistus, on 07/23/2008, -0/+3Did you RTFA? Apple's execs are worried that their high profit margins are giving rivals room to undercut their prices with similar products. This new transition, whatever it turns out to be, will lower their profit margin while delivering a new product to market that Apple doesn't think its competitors will be able to match.
    • ancientshoes, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1i thought it had something to do with the recent mac clones
  • lead2thehead, on 07/22/2008, -11/+48I doubt it will be anything revolutionary. Probably faster CPUs and a $100 price drop.
    • knuckles, on 07/22/2008, -0/+12Probably LED screens across the board.
      • WillyWonka, on 07/22/2008, -6/+4They have LED's on computers now?
      • nycmac247, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3yes an please god keep the matte and make the cinema displays oled
    • dragon76, on 07/22/2008, -1/+8Sounds to me like they are going after the low end and I mean the REAL low end, not the low end of the high end. If they are making a product transition to shut out rivals, that would be the place they have rivals. I am a major Mac head and I am going to buy my niece an Eee PC for her birthday because you can get a neat little internet machine for $500. It's over twice that for the cheapest MacBook.
      • Antialias, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3While I'm intrigued by the "netbooks" as well $500 is way too much for what you get. For that same price you could get a core duo laptop at more than twice the speed, twice the ram, 14+ inch screen, full harddrive, descent graphics capability and longer battery life. There is the small form factor though. I'm hoping the Dell netbooks are worth it at the rumored $299 with same specs as the EEE.
      • skeletorcares, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2the air 2, now with even less features.
    • MrSkills, on 07/22/2008, -1/+3For them to actually warn about it having a significant financial effect, it must be something more major than that.
      • IEatHamburgers, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Since that is the case, I think they're gonna cut down the price of the Mac Mini by half. The specs on the thing are roughly equivalent to the specs on Dell's $299 systems, but Apple doesn't have to pay Microsoft for each system they sell, and Mac OSX development is probably not much of a money sink at this point, so Apple probably still makes money on it (albeit with much lower margins, which is possibly why Apple warned of lower margins to come).

        What would really sell it though is that any price arguments against getting a Mac fall completely out the window at that point, and then the issue becomes compatibility. With all the awful PR Windows is getting lately - particularly Vista which is preinstalled on all new systems - Apple could sway a lot of PC buyers away and shake up the market, especially now. Apple would be taking a major risk in doing so, yes, but Microsoft and PC manufacturers seem more vulnerable now than they ever have been.

        Well, its either that or they're making an iCar.
    • skeletorcares, on 07/22/2008, -2/+1Who likes viral marketing? digg likes viral marketing!

      Its time to wise and up realize that apple uses buzz words to, stay with me here, create buzz. i think lead2thehead is right on. Its going to be the same thing apple always does, slightly faster crap, different case, REVOLUTIONARY! Although, to see an appropriately priced computer from apple would be somewhat revolutionary to apple, it wouldn't be to anyone with any idea about computers though.
    • digichris, on 07/22/2008, -2/+1Yes because we all know Apple doesn't make revolutionary products. iPhone? huh?

      Tired of people knocking a great company because they can't afford their products. On the streets we call that "Hatin'"

      And no I cant afford any Apple products either (got the iPhone tho, price cut in half remember, not by 100 but hundreds of dollars) but I'm not spitting out ***** about how bad Apple is.
      • skeletorcares, on 07/23/2008, -1/+2you deserve apple on the 'streets' of beverly hills, you pansy-poser-douche-apple-user
      • lead2thehead, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Did I mention that I own 4 macs, 3 iPods and an iPhone? I'm not some anti Mac idiot who is "just jealous because I can't afford it". I pay attention to all of Apple's announcements and I've noticed something.... If it's something big like the iPhone, Apple will be sure to tell you it's big. When it's something lame like "product transitions", it's most likely something lame.
  • Phillyzero, on 07/22/2008, -8/+2End up September is brutal...lucky I still have a PC, but for the people who've been waiting for this touted macbook refresh, it looks as if they're not going to be able to use the university (back to school) promo after all...
    • dmbftp, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4That's part of the plan. Help to run out current supplies with the promotion of back to school stuff. Then release the new stuff and not start off by giving away lots of "free" stuff with it in the form of discounts of ipods/etc
  • seantubridy, on 07/22/2008, -6/+306They're going to corner the black turtleneck market.
    • Laminarcissus, on 07/22/2008, -7/+2He's improving though. Now at least he looks like John McEnroe. When he was younger he looked like Anton Chigurh.
    • arjung, on 07/22/2008, -0/+8i don't think anyone else wants to compete in that market.
    • leerayIG88, on 07/22/2008, -2/+11You win the thread. Dugg
  • Chaotics, on 07/22/2008, -10/+121iPhone 3G *in red

    /sarcasm

    //but probably true
  • briLo, on 07/22/2008, -22/+3How the hell is this on the front page of Digg???
    • grammarpolice, on 07/22/2008, -0/+9Because people think it's cool.
      • briLo, on 07/28/2008, -0/+0So articles must be cool to make the front page of Digg. So I should see articles linking Kanye Wests' retarded sunglasses any minute!
    • nicheplayer, on 07/22/2008, -0/+5No doubt! I'd like to read lots more about stuff like this:

      Are Multiplayer Online Games a Stupid Way to Look for Love?
    • angusm, on 07/22/2008, -2/+11Because it's about Apple.
    • digitalpencil, on 07/22/2008, -0/+5http://digg.com/how
      • briLo, on 07/23/2008, -1/+0thanks douchebag.
      • digitalpencil, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1^ no problem ; )
        i don't mind educating people when they ask retarded questions.. if you like, i can turn it into a picture-book to make it a little easier to digest for someone of you're.. ahem.. intelligence.
  • seanmx, on 07/22/2008, -8/+238hopefully they put out some kind of phone. I mean, think about it, if apple made a phone, they could clean up.
    • Ediebriquette, on 07/22/2008, -1/+14I want some of what you're having.
    • plainOldFool, on 07/22/2008, -1/+26Time travel must be awesome
    • digitallysick, on 07/22/2008, -0/+44we could call it "apple phone"
      • jthei, on 07/22/2008, -0/+15or Telemac
      • cbartlett, on 07/22/2008, -0/+54Too bad iPhone is owned by Cisco/Linksys. That would make an ideal name.
      • blurrie, on 07/22/2008, -1/+4hahahahaha
        thank you. that just my morning.
      • MacTyler, on 07/22/2008, -0/+21haha are you kidding? $600 for a phone!? And that wouldn't appeal to businessmen, they want an actual keyboard. It just wouldn't work.
        -Steve Balmer
      • charliecharlos, on 07/23/2008, -0/+3There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share, no chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them, than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get.

        -Guess who
    • serif69, on 07/22/2008, -0/+20What are they gonna use, the click wheel? Seriously, are we back to rotary phones again?
      • tacojohn48, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4What do you mean again?
        My grandmother had rotary phone service until about a year ago when she moved and the phone company made her go touch tone. You could dial it like a normal touch tone phone, but then you would hear clicks instead of a beep.
      • plainOldFool, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4@tacojohn -- and probably weighed 20 pounds. Them things had actual freaking bells in them.
      • tacojohn48, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3No, she actually had a cordless phone. You would push the buttons just like any touch tone, but the phone would make clicks instead of a beep. Most (if not all) landline phones are still rotary enabled.
    • plainOldFool, on 07/22/2008, -0/+8iRotoryDial
  • pyrotix, on 07/22/2008, -5/+60cheap 12" macbook
    • badnewsblair, on 07/22/2008, -1/+4I wish.
    • srodolff, on 07/22/2008, -6/+26Apple = Cheap

      It just ain't gonna happen.
    • arctic, on 07/22/2008, -5/+7Buried for "cheap" in comment.
    • BlackJackJester, on 07/22/2008, -9/+2You realize if they start cutting corners, they become just like every PC laptop manufacturer. Cutting corners is the only way to bring down the prices, other than lessening their profit margin, but Jobbs is too greedy for that (yea, I said it).
      • Mahoney07, on 07/22/2008, -1/+9Did you not read the article? They are cutting profits.
  • Kanten, on 07/22/2008, -54/+61A Mac that runs games?
    • Mudcrutch, on 07/22/2008, -6/+41Macs that can run Windows. Genius.
      • Altotus, on 07/22/2008, -7/+15There are games for Windows?!

      • DirkBelig, on 07/22/2008, -22/+21I love how Mac apologists try to excuse the useless toy-like nature of the Mac by whining, "You can put Windows on a Mac to do stuff like work and play games!" If you need to add Windows to a computer to make it useful, why are you paying 50-100% more for the limited hardware? Are you trying to impress the cute Marxist girl who works at the Starbucks? Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy a Che Geuvera shirt?
      • Tonicks, on 07/22/2008, -6/+17"Are you trying to impress the cute Marxist girl who works at the Starbucks?"

        Thank you.
      • jthei, on 07/22/2008, -3/+21"Are you trying to impress the cute Marxist girl who works at the Starbucks?"

        Why? Did she say anything about me?
      • mlrigsby, on 07/22/2008, -5/+22I love how you call Macs useless toys because they don't play GAMES.
      • inkswamp, on 07/22/2008, -3/+12@mlrigsby,

        You beat me to it. I love when Windows fans say that kind of thing. The *only* reason I have Windows installed is for games. Period. It's like having a virtual gaming console on my Mac. I boot into OS X for the real deal.
    • kevdotbadger, on 07/22/2008, -3/+4This seems plausible.

      Upgrading all the graphic cards in their whole product line.
    • Stewdean, on 07/22/2008, -6/+9Most PC games will run on a Mac - I've got Crysis running on mine quite happily. Just need to boot into boot camp or run Mac native games like WOW. And I can also right click.

      Any other myths you got :) ?



      • inkswamp, on 07/22/2008, -3/+9I'm a Mac user but I have to point out that you're not running Crysis on a Mac. You're running it on Windows running on Apple hardware. Traditionally, a "Mac" is the hardware and OS. If you booted into Windows, you're not really running a Mac.
      • digitalpencil, on 07/22/2008, -4/+3not gonna happen until MS license DirectX to apple (which isn't going to happen) or devs embrace openGL (which isn't going to happen)
        To surmise.. isn't going to happen. Not really a big deal though with bootcamp but i wish they'd leverage fast user switching to cut-down boot times into Windows, either that or see full 3D acc i parallels.
      • HoratioHellpop, on 07/22/2008, -3/+5technically, you're running Crysis on WIndows on Apple hardware ... and it likely looks like poo, compared to what you can get on a (cheaper) PC.
      • leahcim, on 07/22/2008, -4/+3How about the one that says Mac users are pretentious snobs?
    • digitalpencil, on 07/22/2008, -2/+2not gonna happen until MS license DirectX to apple (which isn't going to happen) or devs embrace openGL (which isn't going to happen)
      To surmise.. isn't going to happen. Not really a big deal though with bootcamp but i wish they'd leverage fast user switching to cut-down boot times into Windows, either that or see full 3D acc i parallels.
    • dn11, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2Blame steve jobs.... if it was up to John Carmack Macs would be the top gaming platform.
      http://www.tuaw.com/2007/11/20/carmack-fighting-wi ...
      I actually think the iPhone and the app store is what will finally crack open that barrier. I see no reason why Mac apps won't soon be offered in the store along with iPhone apps, and I see no reason why games won't become some of the most popular paid apps on both platforms. But I still find it disturbing that Apple will have an iron fist on what sort of apps you are allowed to "officially" use
  • protodon, on 07/22/2008, -44/+16I don't give a *****.
    • punkcat, on 07/22/2008, -3/+17yet here you are posting your thoughts.
    • protodon, on 07/22/2008, -5/+2I'm starting my stress free life turdface.
    • OpaqueMurdock, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4Clearly you do.
    • seventoes, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1"I'm starting my stress free life turdface."

      Having some trouble getting started I see.
    • wacomwacoff, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1I doubt that.
  • FractalPhono, on 07/22/2008, -10/+4maybe the transition will be from *just* an iPhone to an "ultimate" all in one remote for your home entertainment system
  • sammykrupa, on 07/22/2008, -5/+78It's going to involve the iPod. Because they are basically giving them away to every college kid who buys a mac. Offer ends September 15. Hmm?
    • tf5bassist, on 07/22/2008, -1/+20They do that every year. It's the reason why back to school season got us HUGE commissions when I worked in sales at Apple.
      • sg7791, on 07/22/2008, -4/+4But usually it's a ***** little shuffle or nano. I believe they're giving away iPod touches now.
      • djepik, on 07/22/2008, -0/+9They're giving away 8 gig nanos (in Canada at least).
      • rubbers0ul, on 07/22/2008, -0/+7I work at a certified campus store, and yeah we're moving stock like nuts especially the 8 GB touches
      • TxAggie08, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4I live in a college town with 50,000 tech hungry students and no Apple store. Why Steve Jobs, WHY!?
      • fastlane44, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1apple doesnt give commission you idiot. nice try
    • KibibyteBrain, on 07/22/2008, -1/+5Plus, its the one product that they need to "transition". The non-Touch iPod seems so pointless now. Sure is a better mp3 player than the Touch/iPhone, but it doesn't matter at all. And the only advantage it brings is the higher capacities of the classic model, which only seems to spite the fact that its a boring choice. The iPod is like grandpa's hunting knife vs. my pocket knife as newer devices, its better, but it doesn't really matter in the end because there is no way I'd actually choose to carry that hunting knife along with me.
      • djepik, on 07/22/2008, -2/+8If they get rid of the non-touch iPod, they will lose a lot of cusomers. Myself included.

        I find touch to be the most annoying "feature" out there.
    • serif69, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3Free iPods for everyone! It's a Stevemas MIRACLE!
  • paulot, on 07/22/2008, -4/+20I think it's the larger iPhone tablet device. That thing would sell like hot cakes if was ultra portable and powerful enough to run good applications (Photoshop for example).
    • subliminalurge, on 07/22/2008, -0/+6What would be better would be a MacBook Tablet. Something that you could use as a conventional laptop, or rotate the screen, lay it flat, and have a tablet computer with multi-touch LCD.

      By the time you have the horsepower to run Photoshop, you're already out of the price range that most people are going to want to spend for just a tablet device. Might as well make it usable as a laptop, too.

      And it's pretty much got to have something to do with multi-touch. I'm sure they didn't invest the development effort to integrate touch into OSX "just" for the iPhone/iPod Touch. They've got bigger plans for the technology.
      • bigsteve, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3Atom bridges this gap. You can run Photoshop on a Eee PC if you wanted to. Atom will be bringing dual core to low voltage platforms.
      • TxAggie08, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3I heard it was some sort of Big Ass Table version of the iPhone to go head to head with Microsoft. Why make something sleek and portable when you can create something that doubles as furniture?
      • subliminalurge, on 07/22/2008, -1/+1I already have a computing device that is a piece of furniture. I call it a desktop PC.
    • dshPls, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3Tablet PC's are cool in theory... but they have too few uses in my opinion to really make me want to get one over a regular Laptop. I doubt the announcement is tablet, unless of course they totally rethink the functionality.
      • diggmaddy, on 07/22/2008, -0/+8"unless of course they totally rethink the functionality".

        That's what Apple normally does. They don't come out with anything revolutionary new, they just do the same old stuff with new revolutionary ways. Usability of gadgets FTW!
    • monica1357, on 07/22/2008, -0/+6uhhhh... who is going to use photoshop on something that small?

    • austin007, on 07/22/2008, -0/+0Something like this?

      http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=itable ...
    • Commodore84, on 07/22/2008, -0/+6Tablet PCs haven't sold well. I don't know why everyone is under this impression, but they simply don't sell anywhere near the numbers people think they do. Look it up.
      • tech42er, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2That's because they're incredibly expensive?
    • reformation, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1How on earth would you use photoshop with a touchscreen?

      Your finger obscures the part of the screen you are working on for ***** sake.
  • nicheplayer, on 07/22/2008, -3/+16Is this when they're going to start using their own iPhone/iTouch processors from that company they bought this year?
    • mbourgon, on 07/22/2008, -0/+7Of all the guesses so far, that makes the most sense. They're transitioning to a new chipset, and that would give them lower prices, which allows them to drop the price.
    • Drizzit, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1That would be inherently stupid. Also expensive. I can see that happening for the portable devices. Perhaps Apple did not like Atom's prices I'm not sure.

      I doubt it's SSD's by default. They're nice, but there still needs to be some work done on the OS side of things to fully take advantage of their abilities.

      OS X Licensing - Possible and despite people's arguments it's just a matter of time. Apple is a grown up company that would not die over the loss of Apple hardware sales. In fact Mac fans will most likely stick with Apple's machines and they'd probably be a bit cheaper. Getting OS X out to the masses would be exactly what the computer industry needs. Vista never energized the market as expected. OS X being available to a reference design would be a paradigm shift of huge possibilities.

      Data only iPod Touch's? Those would be nice if they were open to all carriers.
  • yoyofoshow, on 07/22/2008, -3/+10I'm guessing that the college discount was to get the soon-to-be-crap products off the shelves, I want a new macbook!
    • MtheoryX, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1TBH: I've purchased brand spankin' new tech, and slightly older tech...I like the newer tech...but my wallet absolutely loves the older gen.

      Plus, if it's for personal, non-money-making purposes, I just can't justify the cost of cutting edge tech. I try not to buy stuff that depreciates; if I have to, I make sure that the cost is as low as possible by purchasing older gen, or refurb.
    • reformation, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Or it could be the same offer they do every year!!!
  • jgc7, on 07/22/2008, -1/+51Probably updated MacBook Pros. A new product probably wouldn't sell enough to significantly affect operating margins in the near term. My guess is they are going to make SSDs standard on the MBPs. 64GB/128GB SSDs can now be bought for $300-$500 which would cut deep into apple's margin in the near term, but would allow them to leap frog the competition.
    • EllimistX, on 07/22/2008, -0/+13Out of everything here, I'd say this is the most plausible, given the upcoming redesign...
    • jasonhdavis, on 07/22/2008, -0/+7To the typical user, SSDs don't mean anything. Granted, MBP users aren't typical, but if you're going to buy a high performance laptop for production, I doubt you're thinking about anything other than a MBP. Apple's gain in this move would not be significant enough to warrant undercutting their profits so much. As for the end-user gain, it would only be in applications with high amounts of disk reads/writes.

      I have been wrong before, though.
      • KyleGoetz, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Extra hours of battery life, man...
    • DarkNemesis618, on 07/22/2008, -0/+6I'm waiting to upgrade my Macbook Pro and am waiting for the refresh...I'm hoping that SSDs don't come standard. I know their benefits, I'd just rather have the 200GB regular hard drive. More space. I have an 80GB on mine now and sometimes room gets tight, 64GB wouldn't be enough and the upgrade to 128GB would probably be too costly.
    • Dhalgren, on 07/22/2008, -0/+213" MBP would be awesome...
    • RichardHendrix, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1But that wouldn't "cut out the competition"

  • conversekid, on 07/22/2008, -9/+364 gb touch plox!!!
    • Cloud7654, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2plox? What are you, 5?
      • danielsamuels, on 07/22/2008, -0/+35 or from 4chan.. Oh wait, they're the same thing!
      • Myonosken, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1@daniel: Only when they catch the 5 year olds.
  • phunlee, on 07/22/2008, -1/+15Solid State Drives? Are they finally cheaper?
  • gimmeslack12, on 07/22/2008, -3/+83Ugh, here goes the Apple hype machine again. Does anyone else realize that this is the stuff of mega-letdowns? I guess being a Mac Addict for nearly 20 years I just can't stomach getting my hopes up anymore. See you in September when they don't introduce a touch screen, brain syncing, automatic coffee making Mac that everyone for some dumb reason thinks they need.
    • willgonz, on 07/22/2008, -0/+23Heck, I already got pictures of the new device. Let me fire up photoshop and show you.
    • bundwallah, on 07/22/2008, -0/+17"Coffee making Mac" = MacJava?!?!?!? SUN is gonna be mad! :) If Apple can make a Mac that can make me a decent espresso I'd be interested.
      • gimmeslack12, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4Somehow I already know that if Apple somehow did venture into this market that Mr. Coffee would quickly be put on the ropes. Apple's reputation for going 110% everytime, precedes them.
      • Ramble, on 07/22/2008, -1/+6Especially going 110% on what the price should be.
      • gimmeslack12, on 07/22/2008, -1/+4:'(
    • JohnnySoftware, on 07/22/2008, -2/+3Yeah, people can find plenty of things to do from July through September without wasting a lot of brain cycles on what this new product will be. They'll know what it is when Apple announces it - not when Apple announces the date that they will announce the product.

      Speculation just serves to show some things that Apple could do better, how well it has done in many areas, and what consumers would like to buy/have that maybe is not being satisfied by other vendors.

      At least Apple is not pre-announcing products 5 years ahead of time and then not coming out with them or continously slipping release dates during that period. That's the real burner. For consumers, corporate budgeting/planning guys, and so on.

      Not to mention stock investors who purchase a stock based on an announced product - and then don't see the expected return on investment until 5 years later, if at all. In the case of Vista, I doubt the bump upward to the stock was all that great, simply because Vista upgrades did not sell all that well - and neither the press nor consumers were all that excited about it when it finally arrived. Not to knock Microsoft but they promised a ton of stuff and then cut it out of the software before they shipped it because development was taking forever.

      To their credit Microsoft has announced they are changing this way of hyping products. Instead ot talking new products up practically as soon as development commences, they are taking a page from Apple's playbook. They are going to develop first, then announce and sell.

      Microsoft, their stock investors, and consumers/businesses will be way better under this arrangement than they have during the 2000s.

      Yeah, so Apple announces announcements ahead of time. Could be doing worse in my book. Maybe Microsoft will copy this way of doing things too. I would not mind.
      • gimmeslack12, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2"Yeah, people can find plenty of things to do from July through September without wasting a lot of brain cycles on what this new product will be."

        Well you see, that is exactly my point. People *will* waste a ton of brain cycles on what this new product will be, and ultimately this will all lead to more hating on Apple because their new Coffee Maker doesn't sync wirelessly with people's buttholes (a feature totally pointless and useless but people will bitch about it anyway just to bring Apple down).
      • Dhalgren, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2You need a blog so that you can post you ***** somewhere that no one goes...
    • asskicker32, on 07/22/2008, -1/+1dugg for "...that everyone for some dumb reason thinks they need."

      This is why I LOVE mac fanboys (though prefer girls.)
  • mikephimikephi, on 07/22/2008, -6/+1A product transition that will "shut out" over 90% of the computer market.
    That is pretty impressive.
    • fritzbrown, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3What article did you read? Because the one I read mentions a transition that "cuts back on its profit margins to help shut out rivals".
  • nbx909, on 07/22/2008, -13/+45OS X for non mac branded hardware or build your own mac.
    • tf5bassist, on 07/22/2008, -3/+29Now THAT... that would be friggin' amazing.
      • hexydes, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4This is the only Apple-related post in this thread I've been even REMOTELY interested in.
      • rimantas, on 07/22/2008, -1/+4Nothing that amazing in writing drivers for all the crap hardware out there.
    • DeFex, on 07/22/2008, -3/+24it would be the right time to do it.
      windows vista, and window 7 based on windows vista, no relief in sight for windows users.
      • prosayik, on 07/22/2008, -1/+9No relief in sight indeed. Hopefully we'll see a better response from FEMA this time around.
      • BlackJackJester, on 07/22/2008, -2/+3I bet you've either never used, or never had a problem with Vista.
    • Frost9999, on 07/22/2008, -0/+26I can hardly think of anything that would scare Microsoft as much as this. It seems extremely unlikely though.
      • Altotus, on 07/22/2008, -0/+11It'll happen someday. Perhaps not September, but some day. I'd hate to be a chair in Redmond that day, that's for certain.
    • VeritasAequitas, on 07/22/2008, -4/+6Just what I want a total about face on everything they have tried to do with there operating system! You know so I can build a machine of my own with spare parts I have laying around! then I have to load all the drivers and hope the the company that makes the part writes drivers for the new OS because hell the switch to vista was easy on drivers almost as easy as building my last linux box. Either that or maybe they'll bloat the OS to all hell so they can fit all the drivers for every piece of crap hardware I might want to buy that would be sweet too!
      /sarcasm
    • antipoet, on 07/22/2008, -0/+6I'm with VeritasAequitas about the hardware problems involved with the idea. But it WOULD probably do both the things they promised in the article: cut out competition, lower their profit margin.

      Seems to make sense to me too. Their hardware often sells itself. Making an OSX for the rest of the world would only bump profits a small amount.
      • TreatsTheBear, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1How does opening up their hardware platform to competition cut out competition?

        They make money on hardware. This isn't going to happen.
    • bigsteve, on 07/22/2008, -8/+4You people are still around? You remind me of that Penny Arcade comic where all the nerds get all psyched up to call Microsoft and demand Linux for the XBOX.

      I'll never understand how you don't get this. Apple sells the experience. They don't feel like playing the Windows game of supporting all kinds of weirdo hardware configs. You buy a Mac, you get the tight integration of hardware and software, the support from one place, everything taken care of. Why the ***** would Apple cannibalize their hardware sales so you can load OS X on your $300 franken-desktop?

      Man, whenever I feel like I'm out of touch or feel like maybe I just don't get it, all I ever need to do is visit this site and bam, I feel better again.
      • roxics, on 07/22/2008, -1/+3You know bigsteve,
        I used to think like those guys before I actually bought a mac. Now I would rather Apple stay sleek and continue to turn out great stable products with good customer service and please the few of us willing to put down more cash for a better experience then to try and please the whole world.
    • BlackJackJester, on 07/22/2008, -0/+7Will not happen. This opens Apple up to all the same BSOD style errors Microsoft has to deal with from hardware incompatibility. Sorry apple users, but 90% of things don't "just work" with apple products - it's why the OS is so slim and stable.
    • digitalpencil, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3would be great but not going to happen, especially in the light of snowleopard.
    • griffinjam, on 07/22/2008, -0/+0You will *never* see OS X for non-Apple branded hardware as long as Apple prices things they way they do.

      Microsoft doesn't make PCs so their (operating system) profits come just from the sale of Windows, which is why Windows is expensive.

      Apple makes PCs and the OS for the PC. They charge more for their PC than other vendors do, but less for their OS than Microsoft does, this way they can claim that they sell their OS for less, when in reality if you buy a PC with Windows you are paying less than if you buy a Mac with OS X.

      Selling the OS so it could be loaded on any system would mean that Apple would miss out on their biggest money maker in the OS/PC pairing. They probably break even with the OS and make all their money from the sale of PCs.

      In short, until OS X starts having a price tag along the same line as Windows, you wont be able to easily load it on any PC.
  • christopher79, on 07/22/2008, -10/+27mac os install for pc?
    if i could buy and install mac os rather than windows i'm there.
  • rrife, on 07/22/2008, -8/+1If they bring back the Newton I'll be the first in line.
  • Phoenixito, on 07/22/2008, -6/+0where'd it say 90%??
  • DeFex, on 07/22/2008, -13/+3people missing the
    Massive ***** detector from vista will now have it on OSX!
  • niczar, on 07/22/2008, -8/+8I'm going with a Eee style thingie, aka netbook category. MacBook Air mini if you will. Those sell like hotcakes but obviously have a lower margin than full fledged computers.
    Think about it, the Eee is the only new category of product that wasn't introduced, or at least popularized by Apple in the mobile market in the past few years.
    • Shmock, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2The reason the Eee PC is so great is because it's cheap and easily hackable, two characteristics not typical of apple.

      Besides, the Air is good enough.
      • niczar, on 07/23/2008, -0/+199% of Eee users don't hack it.

        I'm thinking for what you'd get by taking a MacBook, removing the HDD and DVD, replace the Core 2 Duo with an Atom, and squizzing it up with a smaller screen. Target price $500.
    • asskicker32, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1What about Dell? There are alot of UMPCs on teh market now...
  • chemic34, on 07/22/2008, -4/+9I would really dig if they released a powerful mac tower, that didn't cost $3,000. I really would like the power of a cheap pc, put into a lower priced mac. I would rather not go the hackintosh route either.
    • kelly, on 07/22/2008, -3/+4Mac towers start at $2,299.00
      • Xsecrets, on 07/22/2008, -4/+7ohh snap way to show him.

        Come on pc towers start at $200. I'm not expecting anything that cheap from apple, but they could put out something with decent hardware starting at $799 and going to $1500 with upgrades or something and it would fly off the shelves.

        They need to bring back the Mac.
      • kelly, on 07/22/2008, -1/+3Fly off the shelves and cut into their higher end sales...

        The gamble is finding out which option would make them the most money. Its become very apparent which one that is.... hence the reason why they've stuck with it so long.
      • fantasticjon, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2Yeah, I think Apple tried that in the 80s. Didn't work so hot. With home computers it not just about profit margin. You need to maintain a critical mass in your user base, or no one will make 3rd party apps for you. The larger your user base, the more apps that will be written, which lowers the barriers for even more users migrating to your platform.
    • arctic, on 07/22/2008, -1/+5The 8-core mac has two $1k chips in it, for starters.

      Check out Newegg if you don't believe.
  • esarjeant, on 07/22/2008, -8/+3Maybe a Mac OS X that you can install on any PC? This would open the clone market; there's no reason they can't run this on standard Intel desktops now. Some video/audio requirements may be needed, but it's not a quantum leap.
  • tf5bassist, on 07/22/2008, -8/+3I think it'll either be OS X for standard Intel/AMD boxes, or hopefully a competitor to ASUS's EeePC. Now that would be amazing. Considering as a lot of Apple's "competitors" right now are low-budget machines that can be turned into Hackintoshes, it'd make sense, and it'd probably block out "90% of their rivals".
  • kingman26, on 07/22/2008, -2/+13What an incredibly vague article, but good publicity for AAPL
    • whosyourdiggdad, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1really? Here's a stock quote for today... 152.63 -13.66 (-8.22%). More "good publicity" like this will have their stock price near $0 soon.
  • pantone286, on 07/22/2008, -5/+86It is the long awaited iRack
    • stizz, on 07/22/2008, -0/+40iRack has been out for a while now, he is undoubtedly refering to the upcoming iRan.
    • dangerding, on 07/22/2008, -0/+11http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcjLEwZqcQI
    • JohnnySoftware, on 07/22/2008, -9/+2Rack mounted Macintosh computers running Apple's industrial strength Mac OS X have been out for half a decade. These babies you never had to reboot every 47 days, don't get "slow", and can run some software updates without "rebooting" the computer.

      They have got Unix compatibility, a real command line (CMD.EXE is such a joke, 1975-ish CP/M knock-off that it is), built-in "grid" computing capability, and a lot of other things that enterprise computing customers want to see - minute the things that enterprise computer customers DON'T want to see!
    • reddog093, on 07/22/2008, -4/+2I see what you did there...
    • _skin_, on 07/22/2008, -0/+8I actually thought you meant boobs. Damn.
    • seldon452, on 07/22/2008, -1/+4Only funny mad TV sketch?
  • AlexNC, on 07/22/2008, -6/+5touchscreen netbook, similar to iTouch, but in a 9" size, with beefier specs. Built-in GPS, wifi and works will all app store programs.
    • Vector713, on 07/22/2008, -1/+15There's no such thing as an iTouch.

      It's called the iPod Touch.
    • Jamieee, on 07/22/2008, -0/+5wtf is the iTouch?
    • pantone286, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2My brother told me that my goldfish died because iTouch myself at night.
  • FonzsXe, on 07/22/2008, -20/+0Hey, look at me!! I got a PC. I can use virtually any software on the planet. What a concept. "Don't you get viruses"?, one might ask....no, because I'm not a total retard. Macs are soooooooooooo overrated, and way too expensive. Anything you can do on a Mac I can do on a PC for about $500 less.....and plus thousands of things you'll never be able to ever do on a Mac.

    But hey, they have funny commercials......
    • grimfandango, on 07/22/2008, -1/+11I'm really tired of this crap. It's uneducated, years old, and plagiarism. Oh, and blatant fanboism (to throw another "ism" atcha). I'm a Windows developer, and a PC user, but I still prefer my Mac Book Pro for everyday use - and for working with Final Cut Pro and Photoshop (the quality of the display is way better than any PC laptop display).

      I must admit, I've no idea why people get so uppity about O/S and hardware choice. Or why PC users have this "dumb Mac user" idea - most Mac users are highly competent (media producers/editors/artists/etc) or PC switchers.
    • sg7791, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2PCs are soooooooooooo overrated, and way too expensive. Anything you can do on a PC I can do on Linux for about free.....and plus thousands of things... Maybe not.

      The point is, nobody's telling you to pay for a mac.
  • luxxu, on 07/22/2008, -7/+1considering the lawsuit right now and all it's implications, i'm guessing this means licensing OS/X.
    • Altotus, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2Probably not. Most people are unclear that the lawsuit only claims that Psystar downloaded a software updated, modified the binaries, and redistributed the modified binaries. That's cut-and-dry infringement and has no bearing on licensing OS X or tying it to the hardware platform.

      If the suit had something to do with the EULA, then there might have been some adverse implications of things didn't go Apple's way.
      • aladrin, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1That's not infringement unless they didn't pay Apple for the binaries. There are other laws against it, but not that one.
  • inetiatic, on 07/22/2008, -3/+3It's going to be that they develop their own hardware, this isnt very big news, Apple has been buying people up for awhile now.
  • aliguana, on 07/22/2008, -8/+7OSX86. No other transition would shut out its rivals, unless it started selling its machines for £100.
    • Commodus, on 07/22/2008, -1/+7Apple is a hardware company still - they just won't license out at this point.
      • aliguana, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2I understand the arguement, the licencing-to-clones almost killed them. But that's because a) they negotiated a bum deal with the Cloners and b) Mac OS wasn't really a competitor to Windows at that point.

        At this point in time, Apple hold all the cards. Growing marketshare. Public perception that osx IS an alternative to, or better than, Windows. They don't even need to licence to Clone makers, since almost EVERY pc is a clone - they just need to bundle some gfx and wifi drivers, remove TPM, and sell it. People will still buy Macs, since they still have the "coolness" factor. But they would clean up on Windows users who have no intention of switching yet. An army of osx86 users means an army of Mac users at next upgrade time. Even if the users don't buy Macs straight away, the fact that they use and love and advertise the OS means their families will be more likely to buy Mac, their employers will be more likely to buy Mac. And once Mac is widespread in business, Windows is dead.
    • JohnnySoftware, on 07/22/2008, -1/+5Apple has had OS X running on X86 hardware internally for a decade and has been shipping it for three years.

      Between "Jobs", Apple execs tried out the pundits (or was it their competitors'?) enlightened strategy recommendation of licensing the OS cheap to companies who would sell Macs really cheap and help gain market share. It did not really work.

      First, the computers were not all that much cheaper than the price Apple was selling them for - just cheap enough to undercut Apple's prices is all.

      Second, they really did not boost Apple's market share anyway.

      So all Apple really did is cut its own profits. Yeah, profits during the Mac clone era were way down. Jobs cut that program and canceled the contracts as soon as he returned. Result was the clone makers dried up and blew away and Apple's profits rose. Combining that with new product roll outs like iMac, OS X, iTunes, iPod, and iPhone not only returned Apple to profitability but made them the darling of investors and consumers that they are today.

      By contrast, their competition is stagnating and plagued by problems they just cannot seem to heal. Problems that arose during the same decade since Apple's return to profitability and just will not go away: machines "get slow not long after consumers/businesses start using them, each OS release obsoletes the current hardware forcing customers to buy a whole new computer just to get an OS upgrade, OS upgrades come out like once or twice a decade, OS upgrades are expensive as heck, desktop is unstable and crashes, driver stability trend is to getting worse and not better. constantly updating/rebooting PCs and yet still they seem plagued.

      PC makers have paper thin margins. There is little - practically no innovation between non-Mac PC vendors as they all just focus on cutting costs or they don't make profits. They depend completely on Microsoft to solve problems and innovate. Microsoft can do a lot of things but these 2 are not its strengths. Marketing is more like its thing, really.

      PCs have to be cheap because they have become "disposable'. When a new OS comes out, the PC gets chucked. Winds up in some Chinese landfill being picked apart for parts and poisoning the ground water supply. Hot, new 3-D game comes out - same story: need better graphics card and processor so just chuck the whole thing out. System is running slow and running every piece of software that can be found/bought does not get rid of the problem. Buy a new system.

      Frankly, Intel is working a lot better in Macs than non-Mac PC competition.

      The whole "needing to buy a new PC" every year or two problem goes away if one simply buys a Mac for computing and a set top game console for entertainment. And if you buy a Mac, it comes with OS X OS running on Intel 86 hardware.
      • aliguana, on 07/22/2008, -1/+5It's a matter of perspective - I'm running the same machine I was in 2001, and it works fine. I have a Mac from 2001, and it hardly runs anything at all. If anything, Macs have more of a regular upgrade cycle than PCs have.

        As you say, you can upgrade PCs - buy more ram, better gfx, better cpu, bigger hd. I have an iMac that.. well, is an iMac. If I want better, I need a whole new machine. A lot of PCs are recycled these days, can't say the same thing for old Macs (probably, but not as in "install Linux, put on a new keyboard, ship it out").

        I wish I could upgrade it. I wish I could put in a new mobo, new cpu etc. New screen is hard since it's built in. BUT my Mac doesn't give me that option - It's dump it and buy new. If Macs would follow the PC model (and don't say Powermac, I'm not a millionare) then we'd all be winners.
  • angusm, on 07/22/2008, -28/+20Wall Street analysts believe that it will be one or more of the following:

    iPort - Personal teleportation ("we acknowledge that there have been some problems during the launch phase, and encourage early adopters to try to remain calm: our engineers are working to bring you back and restore missing limbs").

    iPoodle - your personal robotic dog ("AIBO? who said AIBO?")

    iBone - chew toy for your iPoodle

    iPork - nourishing meaty goodness in a white plastic case

    iPopper - an environmentally-friendly networkable popcorn maker

    iPot - Uncle Steve's righteous killer weed, aka Cupertino Gold

    iGod - your very own personal deity. Comes with a flexible EULA that's less restrictive than the Ten Commandments, and easy-to-use Smite functionality

    Other products that didn't make the cut include:

    iMick - an endearing humanoid robot with an Irish-accented speech synthesizer

    iPod Grope - a version of the iPod Touch that can't keep its hands to itself

    MacBook Helium - the world's first lighter-than-air portable has a tendency to float away; three early prototypes were lost when someone inadvertently left a window open

    iPod Pico - the world's first sub-atomic personal MP3 player
    • ElbowGeek, on 07/22/2008, -1/+7I very rarely use the digg up/down function as it is mostly use in the context of the popularity contests one encounters in high school. But this was a classic bit of iHumour worthy of a hundred diggs or more.

      I loved the iGod particularly - the EULA as divine commandments. Brilliants.
      • schneb, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Dugg for truth of "popularity contest" comment.
    • BurgerPunch, on 07/22/2008, -3/+2Don't give up your day job
    • LeRenard, on 07/22/2008, -2/+5I hate being "that guy".. but you are aware that Mick is an offensive term to some, correct?
      • arjie, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Because it reminds them of that Rolling Stone. Damn good reason, that.
      • mrraven200, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2I think he composed it on his iBigot.
    • jo42, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1You forgot:

      iButtPlug
    • kelchm, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1iPot - Uncle Steve's righteous killer weed, aka Cupertino Gold

      ^^^ nice.
  • grizwald, on 07/22/2008, -10/+5i think it will be a refreshed macbook for under $500
  • SublimeRuin, on 07/22/2008, -2/+12The Consensus here seems to be:
    Cheap MacBook - ($500 range)
    Upgrade to the Mini line
    Licensing OSX
    Macbook/MBP upgrades

    The only two things there that would cut into margins would be $500 MacBook or Licensing OSX (Reduced Mac Comp sales)
    • dangerding, on 07/22/2008, -1/+9no chance on OSX - The Steve's first move upon his return in '97 was to kill the clones. You really think he's going to willingly do that on his own? I doubt it.
      • Drizzit, on 07/22/2008, -1/+11The company is vastly different. Mac now is a smaller fraction of profits compared to iPhones/iPods and clearly the company is moving towards services and products tied to those services. When Jobs took over, Mac was their profits period.

        I hate to tell it to the WinFans, but licenses for OS X would be a net improvement for PC users.

        Dell would be the first company to sign up.
      • aliguana, on 07/22/2008, -1/+4But there doesn't need to be "licencing to cloners" now - every pc IS a clone. They just need to sell the OS.
      • P373Y, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2and their support, and reliability would suffer.
  • gthrank, on 07/22/2008, -19/+14Ugh I am so sick of Apple Fanboys.
    • sg7791, on 07/22/2008, -3/+5*Clap, clap, clap*

      You sir, are a genius.
    • monosyth, on 07/22/2008, -1/+4I'm sick of people like you who comment on articles like this when you don't care about it. go comment usefully somewhere else. go away! shoo!
    • Palaceguard, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1I agree, Why the hell you post? Filter the Damn Apple News
  • nonsequitur668, on 07/22/2008, -13/+3Something is happening here, and I'm getting a little worried. Let me begin by saying that there's an important difference between me and Apple. Namely, I am willing to die for my cause. Apple, in contrast, is willing to kill for its -- or, if not to kill, at least to exercise control through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation. As I've said in the past, Apple wants you to believe that free speech is wonderful as long as you're not bashing it and the fork-tongued witlings in its gang. You should be wary of such claims. Be aware! Be skeptical! Think! Do not be diverted, deceived, or mesmerized by Apple's wicked, bookish excuses.

    Just think: If Apple were to get its hands on the levers of power it'd immediately make excessive use of foul language. If you don't believe me then consider that it's its deep-seated belief that everything it says is utterly and thoroughly true. Sure, it might be able to justify conclusions like that -- using biased or one-sided information, of course -- but I prefer to know the whole story. In this case, the whole story is that Apple likes to brag about how the members of its Fabianism movement are ideologically diverse. Perhaps that means that some of them prefer Stalin over Hitler. In any case, Apple believes that its blessing is the equivalent of a papal imprimatur. Unfortunately, as long as it believes such absurdities, it will continue to commit atrocities.

    Each rung on the ladder of diabolism is a crisis of some kind. Each crisis supplies an excuse for Apple to thrust all of us into scenarios rife with personal animosities and petty resentments. That is the standard process by which yellow-bellied dopeheads silence any criticism of the brainwashing and double standards that Apple has increasingly been practicing. Apple has a talent for inventing fantasy worlds in which it can achieve its goals by friendly and moral conduct. Then again, just because Apple is a prolific fantasist doesn't mean that the best way to reduce cognitive dissonance and restore homeostasis to one's psyche is to toss sops to the egos of the brain-damaged. Do Apple's slaves indicate in a rough and approximate way the two belligerent tendencies that I believe are the main driving force of modern simplism? No, that would be the correct and logical thing to do. Instead, they lionize abhorrent misers.

    I am now in a position to define what I mean when I say that Apple habitually reads negative meanings into innocuous remarks. What I mean is that it says that it is the one who will lead us to our great shining future. You know, it can lie as much as it wants but it can't change the facts. If it could, it'd sincerely prevent anyone from hearing that it keeps saying that it holds a universal license that allows it to waffle on all the issues. For some reason, Apple's apple-polishers actually believe this nonsense. At this point, all I can do is repeat a line from my previous letter: "Apple's personal attacks are a farraginous amalgam of despotism and barbarism".

    This march into soporific, antihumanist recidivism is not happening by mere chance. It is not, as many rancorous defalcators insist, the result of the natural, inevitable course of things. It is happening as a direct result of Apple's stuck-up circulars. There is doubtlessly an unprincipled dimension to Apple's roorbacks. Or, if "unprincipled" is too narrow of a term, perhaps you'd prefer "demonic". In any case, I am worried about a new physiognomy of servitude, a compliant citizenry relieved of its burdens by a "compassionate" Apple. It's hard to spot the compassion when you notice that when a friend wants to drive inebriated, you try to stop him. Well, Apple is drunk with power, which is why we must lift our nation from the quicksand of injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Apple takes a perverse pleasure in watching people scurry about like rats in a maze, never quite managing to announce that we may need to picket, demonstrate, march, or strike to stop Apple before it can defy the law of the land. May we never forget this if we are to deny Apple and its supporters a chance to introduce a zeitgeist of extremism to our society.
    • kmc127, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1wtf?
    • epadafunk, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1I just want to know what that was all about.
    • djepik, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Looks like somebody just discovered thesaurus.com
    • djepik, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Congrats nonsequitur668 on having all of your 14 comments burried! Keep it up, tiger!
    • sg7791, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Dugg for grammar and punctuation. But you still fail for plagiarism, existent or not. (Story of my life)
    • aenegeling, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1I am too afraid to read it.
  • nakile, on 07/22/2008, -4/+102Apple is never going to license out OS X. Ever.

    Licensing out Mac OS was what almost killed Apple in the mid 90s in the first place. When Jobs came back to Apple, of the first things he had to do was KILL the clone market because it wasn't helping out Apple at all. Apple is an OEM. They make their money off hardware, not software. Nobody seems to realize that.
    • stevensj2, on 07/22/2008, -10/+4The article mentions the move would "cut into profit margins."

      You don't seem to realize that.

      Not saying it is going to happen, but for a *consumer* to pretend that they _know_, and have the authority to say, what a *company* will or will not do? Come on.
    • pyrates, on 07/22/2008, -1/+4No, the reason why it killed them is because Jobs wanted more money per license then Microsoft was charging, so the only oem's that would license it is 2nd tier ones where the build quality wasn't as good. This is how Microsoft won that. Sure Microsoft charged less, but Microsoft had more profits because it had much more sales. Microsoft knew they would make it up in volume and they were right.

      Not to mention that the mac oem's were charging much less then Apple was in order to grow their sales and compete against the ibm pc and its clones. And Apple could not compete with that as well because even though they had chosen to license their OS, they still attempted to profit off of hardware sales. You can't do that in that kind of market.

      Plus all of their design changes with each new line of mac where the ports weren't the same from the previous model while the pc's were, just caused frustration among consumers and businesses. The reason why Apple attempted that was to lock in sales from their customers who would have to purchase all new peripherals and couldn't use their old peripherals. And they didn't like that.
      • Me1000, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1jobs wasnt at apple in the mid 90's...
    • Kershoc, on 07/22/2008, -5/+7A lot of us realize that. What Apple doesn't realize is a lot of us could care less about their hardware. We want their software. And until they start selling just their software, I for one, will not give them a single penny.
      • kinerry, on 07/22/2008, -0/+5too late
      • sleepycoder, on 07/22/2008, -1/+3Have you tried thinking about reasons why Apple might *not* want to support clones? How bloated would OS X become to support all of the random motherboard/video card/peripheral combinations that exist in the PC world? Is it worth risking Apple's relatively solid reputation for reliability to sell OS X to people who want to run it on their $200 PC's from Wal-mart? What about the increase in staff needed to test and support OS X on non-Apple hardware?

        Maybe Apple is being short-sighted about avoiding PC clones, but seeing as how they posted some record sales for the last quarter, I don't think they're too worried about it right now.
      • MrSkills, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2They wouldn't have to support every system in the world. They could limit it to "approved" graphics cards etc.
      • crunchmuffin, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1OS X runs the FreeBSD kernel, which just makes this a matter of loading which kernel modules are needed. Would be slightly heavier than a specifically built kernel, but it's still a hell of a lot faster than windows.
      • reformation, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1Please don't use that stupid 'I, for one' phrase - it makes you sound like a prick
    • esarjeant, on 07/22/2008, -1/+5The clone market had nothing to do with Apple falling apart in the 90's, they managed to confuse people enough with their own hardware. You might want to read Steve Levy's book to get the whole story.

      How could they not make money off the software? Microsoft sells Windows Vista for more than $300, I bet if you offered an XP to OS X upgrades for $250 you would have the product flying off the shelves.

      The Mac Mini is estimated at $275 BOM out-the-door and at a retail price of $600 Apple is making $325 per unit. You can barely buy Microsoft Vista for this amount, why not just sell Mac OS X at a price comparable to Vista and pocket the profit?
      • esarjeant, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2btw, if they don't do this, the hackintosh is going to thrive and Apple market share will dwindle as consumers figure out how to run Mac OS X on their own.

        You can bet the $130 street price for OS X isn't going to cut it when hacked PC's are shipping that can boot OS X without any modification. It will be cheaper to buy a cloned PC then to get any Vista or Macintosh computer.
      • thedragon4453, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2Thats just not what Apple is about though. Apple "just works." They have enough problem making OS X for Mac. Imagine if they had to open it up to the amount of manufacturers that MS does. Apple sells hardware. OS X will never sell by itself as long as Jobs is there.

        Now, I think that a Mac Tower is a possibility here. That would be a profit hit for Apple, but would severely undercut the Dell's of the world. Even more likely, is they up the spec's of the Mac Mini, or drop the current price to 400-500. Again, it would hurt the profit line, but it would get a ton of Macs into homes.

        Either that, or a price cut for the Macbook line.

        But mark my words - it won't be OS X for x86 computers.
      • MrSkills, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1But they would not have to "open it up to the amount of manufacturers Microsoft does".

        There is a third way here - opening it up but in a strictly limited and controlled fashion, with only "approved" hardware combinations.
      • thedragon4453, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1I'll amend my comment slightly:

        Apple will not release OS X for X86 computers, unless it loses to Psystar. If they lose, and the court rules that you can sell Leopard on a white box, Apple will start licensing.
    • larryjr88, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2Yet all they brag about in ads is software....
    • innovaciones, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2The REAL REAL business for apple are iPods (with iTunes) and now the iPhone (with App Store).
      • freezerburn666, on 07/25/2008, -0/+1yeah, because they can't make a computer worth *****
    • deadbaby, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1It's not the mid-90's anymore. Apple isn't at death's door. Times are different. I personally don't think they are planning to license OSX anytime soon but just because something happened a certain way 15 years ago doesn't mean it won't change. No one would have ever believed Apple would switch to x86 and they did.
  • srodolff, on 07/22/2008, -14/+3"The new, unnamed product will continue to have "technologies and features that others can't match," according to the CFO."

    Would that be the lack of ports, a replaceable battery, and a pathetically slow processor?

    Thin and small are worthless without adequate performance.
    • BurgerPunch, on 07/22/2008, -1/+1"Thin and small are worthless without adequate performance"

      This is why your some loser reading digg all day instead of making big $$ at apple
  • walls750, on 07/22/2008, -8/+2BigMac?

    ...lame...lame...lame...bored at work i guess
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