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news of 2004-03-04

New 10.3.3 build?

Railheaddesign.com talks about a new seed of Mac OS X. ADC Select members confirm that there is no newer build than 7F34 available so far.

[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-04 at 17:24 CET ]
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No cheap Macs?

Apple's Corporate Controller Peter Oppenheimer says: "We're not focused on shipping four, five, six hundred dollar PCs. We don't think there's a good way to innovate there or differentiate, and we don't think people are making a lot of money." (You'll find the whole article here...)

Which leads me - again - to the following thinking... While it's certainly true that there isn't much money in selling really cheap headless Macs (say: 499 or even 399 USD), there's certainly sales to be found in that area. The W/Lintel user has a choice: He can buy really cheap or medium or expensive hardware for computing. The Mac user can choose any one from one computer maker: Apple. And Apple's entry-level eMac costs its price. My question is: Is there a market for an eMac without monitor? And my answer, even if it costs 599 or 699 USD, is yes, because a) the eMac's display is not that good, anyway and b) the easiest way for a PC user to switch to the Mac is to keep his investment in peripherals like a display.

A headless Mac doesn't need a SuperDrive. It needs 128 MB RAM soldered to the motherboard (expandable to 640 MB RAM), it needs a 1 GHz G4 processor, the usual ports and a Combo drive (they're cheap nowadays). My old saying (it's old now alright): Take an iBook, strip off the screen and sell it for 499 USD. Yes, you could design a nicer machine - and yes people would buy that for 599 USD. Sadly, it just seems like Apple really doesn't want to do that.

[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-04 at 16:53 CET ]
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MacWorld about MS Office 2004

MacWorld has posted a 'first look' on Office 2004. Without pictures, but better descriptions of the features than on MS' page about the new version. Worth a look if you're going to buy the update.

[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-04 at 13:41 CET ]
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"Things I don't like about being a Mac user"

You can read the full column at osNews. It says things like: "To me, the iBook is the perfect example of what mobile computing is all about. It's small, yet can accommodate an optical drive. Battery life is exemplary. You really can use this machine away from the mains for a good four hours. And we're not talking about using huge capacity batteries that double the size of the machine. The iBook is whisper quiet in use. The advantage of using an archaic 800MHz G4 processor is that it hardly ever requires active cooling so there is no obtrusive fan noise. You can start up the machine in the quietest of environments without drawing undue attention to yourself and without annoying others. Finally, the instant wake up from sleep is a revelation. This may sound like a trivial point but not having to wait for your laptop to wake up when you open it really does make a difference to usability." Then, of course, comes the part about not liking to be a Mac user. ;-)

[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-04 at 11:36 CET ]
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