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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Saturday, January 03, 2004

Rating Apple in 2003: My perspective

2003 was a big year for many reasons, and Apple predictably positioned itself for far more press than a company of that size deserves. Here's my take on Apple's performance in 2003:

Finances. Apple's sales were flat or down in 2003, depending on the market. The company has $4.5 billion in liquid assets, about the same as last year, but only spends $25 million a year on research and development (R&D). However, Apple's economic realities have never stood in the way of the company's influence on the industry. Grade: B

Marketshare. Apple's marketshare in 2003 fell to 1.98 percent, according to IDC sales forecasts for 2003 and Apple's public statements about Mac sales. In short, Apple's marketshare has fallen, year-after-year, each year since Steve Jobs took the reins. And last year's Switch campaign? Useless. Grade: D

Mindshare. Quick: Name another company that so thoroughly dominates an industry in which it is such a minor player. Don't hurt yourself, there is no such company. Apple's marketing mistake (Switch, ahem) notwithstanding, no company gets better press than Apple. Grade: A

Aluminum Powerbooks (1st generation). Apple fans were clamoring for a TiBook replacement but what they got in January 2003 was something else entirely, a 12-inch PowerBook G4 that was more iBook than PowerBook, and a behemoth 17-inch PowerBook G4 that wouldn't fit on most computer desks, let alone airline seat-trays. Both machines were underpowered, ran hot, and were overpriced. And why wasn't there a 15-inch version? Grade: C

Aluminum Powerbooks (2nd generation). Six months later, Apple delivered on speed bumps, price drops, and even fixed the heat problems. But the big star of the 2nd generation AlBooks was the new 15-inch version, which finally provided an adequate replacement for the aging, peeling TiBook. Grade: B

G4 iBooks. I've been using a G3 iBook 12-inch for over two and half years and really wanted to get a replacement in late 2003, but the long-awaited G4 iBooks disappointed. There were two big problems. First, Apple deliberately hobbled the performance of the iBook G4 by using low-end G4 chips and adding no L3 cache. And second, you can only get the slowest processor with the 12-inch iBook, and I'd have opted for the faster chip if I could have. Overal, the iBook G4 has been a huge disappointment. Grade: C

iPod (3rd generation). As the owner of both a 1st generation (5 GB) iPod and a 2nd generation (30 GB, dock-based) iPod, I feel uniquely qualified to compare them adequately. The new iPods are beautiful, as expected, but lack the battery life and less-touchy scroll wheel that graced the earlier models. More egregiously, Apple still locks its customers into their proprietary music store and crappy AAC format. To shame: The iPod is so close to perfect. Grade: B

iTunes Music Store. I've complained about the AAC format, but let's be serious: None of Apple's competitors have come close to the experience of the iTunes Music Store, and the improvements Apple made in the October refresh addressed most of my other complaints. I purchased over 200 songs from the iTunes Music Store. Bravo. Grade: A

AirPort Extreme. Apple jumped the gun on 802.11g six months before the standard was ratified with the release of AirPort Extreme, putting hundreds of thousands of potential customers at risk. Fortunately, Apple got lucky, and the 802.11g standard didn't change enough to warrant anything other than a simple firmware upgrade. But Apple still offers the simplest wireless networking, and they deserve some credit for that. Grade: B

PowerMac G5. Apple's claim that the PowerMac G5 was the "fastest PC on earth" was proven wrong so quickly and so often that the company should be sued for misrepresentation. But the biggest gaff of 2003 shouldn't betray a simple truth: Though they are still overpriced compared to PCs, the high-end, dual-processor 2.0 GHz G5s do indeed give mainstream PCs a run for their money. And seriously, when you consider how far behind the G4 was, this is huge: I have Pentium III notebooks that outperform my 1 GHz G4 iMac. Grade: B

Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther". Panther is a decent upgrade, but it should be free or cheap to existing OS X customers, and not $129. That's atrocious, and if it wasn't for the G5 debacle, it would have been Apple's most embarassing move of 2003. That said, Panther is a decent refinement to OS X, sort of like Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) was to XP. Grade: B

iApps suite (iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie). Apple's iApps get a great A rating from me, but what the heck? They were barely updated in 2003 at all. Apple added support for the iTunes Music Store and remote music sharing to iTunes and ... huh. That's about it. What gives? Grade: C

Safari. Safari is my favorite Web browser on any platform, and if I could run it on Windows, I would. I love Safari. Grade: A

Keynote. Unlike Safari, no one was clamoring for a good presentation package on OS X (and besides, PowerPoint X was fine). Keynote is nothing more than Egoware for Steve Jobs: Unnecessary, unwanted, unneeded. Grade: C

Retail stores. Apple opened 25 new retail stores in 2003, for a total of 65. The company lost $5 million on these stores in 2003 (compared to a $22 million loss in 2002) but the GAP-like establishments are an important way to push the Apple brand on customers who might otherwise never have a chance to see Apple's products. Grade: B

Overall. So that's where we stand. Not bad for a supposed Apple hater, eh? Overall grade: B-

[ Posted at 9:00 PM | Permalink ]

Mozilla Backup 1.2 released

Mozilla Backup 1.2 is out. "Mozilla Backup is a tool for backing up and restoring Mozilla profiles. Version 1.2 adds better backup files, multilanguage support, support for Netscape and some new features. In addition several crash bugs have been fixed."

[ Posted at 8:51 PM | Permalink ]

Sad news

Mailblocks: "This weekend we announced with great sorrow the unexpected death of colleague and friend, CEO Phil Goldman. The Mailblocks team will carry forward his vision to build the world's best email service and will launch Mailblocks 2.0 on January 8th, 2004. We will keep the Mailblog running as we want to continue to offer you special tips and provide a forum for your feedback. You’ll be hearing from us soon with new tips to maximize your use of Mailblocks 2.0. Thank you for continuing to interact with us. Phil truly loved hearing from everyone. Best wishes for a Happy New Year and a successful and healthy 2004. --The Mailblocks Team"

I'm currently evaluating Mailbocks and it looks excellent. But Phil was an amazing person, responsible in part for Apple's first multitasking UI shell, the MultiFinder, and WebTV. He'll be missed.

[ Posted at 8:50 PM | Permalink ]

Friday, January 02, 2004

KOffice port to OS X progressing ... Apple Office?

We just might be seeing an advanced preview of the long-rumored Apple office productivity suite here, folks. KOffice is based on the KDE environment for Linux, just like Apple's Safari (who KDE equivalent is called Konquerer). Assuming this is what happens, Apple obviously has a lot of work to do cleaning up the UI. But going the KOffice route just sort of makes sense, even though there's an arguably more mature alternative in OpenOffice.org also available.

[ Posted at 9:12 AM | Permalink ]

OmniGroup previews OmniWeb 5

I'm actually an OmniGroup customer (I purchased OmniWeb 4.x a while back) and while I applaud the ideas behind the recently-revealed OmniWeb 5.0 browser, I can't help but think that these guys are just treading water. If their goal is to become the Opera of the Mac platform (better, but non-free), then congratulations, they've succeeded. But most people are fine with Safari (or IE on Windows) and an arguably better (and free) solution from Mozilla is available on both platforms. Anyway, I do wish them luck: You have to sort of root for guys who natively support the underlying platform so effectively.

[ Posted at 9:09 AM | Permalink ]

Thursday, January 01, 2004

InfoWorld on Apple's G5 performance claims bogus, delivery timing

Despite a gushing review from a UNIX guy, some truths can't be ignored. "Comparing official Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) dual-processor throughput tests with the unofficial numbers on Apple’s Web site, the 3.06GHz Xeon bests the 2GHz Power Mac G5 by some margin. But wait, doesn’t Apple call the Power Mac G5 the world’s fastest PC? Yes, and I think that characterization was a big mistake from the beginning ... Apple rushed the Power Mac G5 out the door in the fall of 2003 in order to win the race to be the first 64-bit desktop (AMD was in the other lane)."

[ Posted at 9:43 PM | Permalink ]

Inevitable Apple backlash gains steam

What happens when you tout superior products that aren't, in fact, superior? People start complaining.

Reuters: "Online petitions have collected hundreds of signatures from potential plaintiffs seeking to file lawsuits over claims of defects in the iBook laptop. Another growing source of complaints surrounds Apple's wildly-popular iPod line of digital music players ... The company, with a market share of around 2 percent, is able to command higher prices due in part to Apple machines being perceived as more secure and reliable than PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system ... The claims of problems have also extended to the company's higher-end PowerBook line. Macworld magazine, in its December issue, said it had to return three of six 15-inch aluminum PowerBook G4s it ordered for testing purposes because of defects."

CNET: "Reports are cropping up online that frustrated owners of Apple iBooks are planning to hang up on customer service and take their complaints to the streets."

P2PNet: "Problems for Apple: There's no denying that most Apple devotees are loyal to the core and would rather commit hari-kari than say anything bad about the company and/or its products. But that doesn't apply to all Apple enthusiasts."

[ Posted at 9:34 PM | Permalink ]

Feeling lucky?

Science fun: The BBC looks at why some people have all the luck. "Why do some people get all the luck while others never get the breaks they deserve? A psychologist says he has discovered the answer."

[ Posted at 9:26 PM | Permalink ]

Wednesday, December 31, 2003

Stealing Nemo: French author sues Pixar

What? Steve Jobs steal?? The Tocqueville Connection: "The French author of a children's book is suing Disney for using what he says were characters similar to ones he created in its hugely successful animated film 'Finding Nemo', his lawyer said Wednesday. Franck Le Calvez claims the hero of the US movie, a clown fish named Nemo, looks very much like the main character in his book 'Pierrot le poisson-clown' (Pierrot the Clown Fish), which came out at the end of 2002 and whose outline was lodged with a French authors' copyright association in 1995, his lawyer, Pascal Kamina, said."

[ Posted at 9:26 AM | Permalink ]

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

Israel stops buying Microsoft software

MSNBC: "In an apparent showdown over price, Israel's government has suspended purchases of Microsoft productivity software and is encouraging the development of an open source alternative. A spokeswoman for the Finance Ministry, which oversees government purchases, said Tuesday that government agencies would use existing Microsoft Office products for the time being rather than upgrade to newer versions. The Israeli government also will encourage the development of lower-priced alternatives to Microsoft software in an effort to help expand computer use by the public. To that end, the Finance Ministry has cooperated with Sun Microsystems and IBM in designing the Hebrew language version of OpenOffice software, a freely distributed open-source alternative to Microsoft Office."

[ Posted at 4:09 PM | Permalink ]

Shoddy reporting

In a bizarre article, the Evening Standard reports that "Apple has announced a cut-price mini version" of the iPod (the so-called "mini-pod"). "Now Apple is set to release a smaller version, costing £65, which will be able to store 800 songs." Sounds great, but it hasn't happened, at least not yet. After getting Apple fans blithering over the first few paragraphs, the article then switches into reality mode. "Apple chief Steve Jobs is expected to unveil the cheaper iPod at a San Francisco exhibition next week." Hey, great reporting guys.

[ Posted at 12:25 PM | Permalink ]

Notebooks cheaper than ever ... and falling

E-Commerce Times: "Laptop bargains abound, partly because of stiff competition between tech heavyweights Dell and Hewlett-Packard." Too bad we haven't seen massive price cuts on Apple's elegant but expensive PowerBooks.

[ Posted at 9:04 AM | Permalink ]

2004 isn't the year of Linux

Delaware Online: "Going all-Linux requires enough know-how that people with little patience for computers are likely to get flustered, and compatibility hiccups mean Linux isn't ready to be a replacement for Windows." You have to scroll down to read the blurb; it's under the misleading "Linux requirements too much for PCs" heading, which refers more to the technical knowledge you need to run Linux than the system requirements. The article notes that Linux's market share is 1.4 percent, according to Jupiter Research, but incorrectly credits the Mac with 5 percent (it's under 2 percent, as I've noted in this blog).

[ Posted at 9:01 AM | Permalink ]

Monday, December 29, 2003

BrowserSpy

BrowserSpy can tell you all kinds of detailed information about you and your browser. Stuff like the version of your browser. What kind of things it supports and what it doesn't support. Furthermore it can provide you detailed information about JavaScript, Java, Plug-ins, Components, Bandwidth, Language, Screen, Hardware, IP, Cookies, Web Server, and much more....

[ Posted at 1:47 PM | Permalink ]

Aliens Cause Global Warming

If you needed any further evidence that Michael Crichton is a genius, look no further than this Caltech speech transcript. "I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science-namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy."

[ Posted at 1:33 PM | Permalink ]

My next laptop

Thanks Keith: I can't discuss this further because of an NDA, but IBM's next ultralight laptop, the ThinkPad X40, was just outted by Gizmodo. More info here and here. But yeah, I'm seriously getting one of these the second they're available. Soon. :)

[ Posted at 10:54 AM | Permalink ]

Science fun: Top 10 astronomy images of 2003

Space.com: "Seldom does astronomy enjoy a year with such avid and widespread amateur participation, from first-timers watching compelling sky events and photographing them, to a kid who stumped the experts with one remarkable picture that enthralled the media and the public around the world." They're all good, but conspiracy theorists will enjoy this one.

[ Posted at 10:48 AM | Permalink ]

Winamp already updated to version 5.01

Winamp 5 has barely been out the door two weeks, but it's already go its first Apple-like patch to version 5.01. It's unclear what, if any, new features are included; I supsect it just included bug fixes.

[ Posted at 10:42 AM | Permalink ]

Sunday, December 28, 2003

Sony PSX exposed

liksang.com: "The PSX is a high-end electronics device designed to run PS2 and PlayStation games, connect to broadband and record both DVDs and television. The unit is also be capable of receiving analogue television broadcasts to an included TV tuner. Two versions were released on Saturday the 13th December in Japan, one with 160GB hard drive, and one with 250GB hard drive." This article includes numerous pictures.

[ Posted at 5:37 PM | Permalink ]