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December 7, 2000
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December 7, 2000
I've been playing a little more with the demo of Mac's Driver, and since learning that the demo can be hacked, it's been a lot more fun. You can change the cars, the power of the cops, the map (San Francisco and Miami Beach are the options), and tweak with other settings. Given this insight, I'm definitely recommending those with a G3/G4 processor and about 35 MB of free hard drive space give the demo a spin.
There's still no multi-player option, so I'm not interested, but for those looking for a decent driving game, Driver might fit the bill. Retail price is $29.95.
December 5, 2000
Apple announced today that their fiscal quarterly results will stink to the tune of a $225 to $250 million loss. In after hours trading the stock was in the $13/share range. As Apple's $4 billion cash reserves equal about $11/share, this is the equivalent of paying $2 for the stock.
There are some interesting consequences coming out of this. First, Steve Jobs readily admits that Apple has missed the boat on rewritable CD-ROM burners, instead shipping their product line with DVD-ROM drives. Look for next year's machines to offer CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drives to get the best of both worlds.
Second, the mis-marketed G4 Cube will be redesigned to better target the business/enterprise sector it should have been aimed at. Additionally, look for Apple to produce a small, highly portable laptop in the 4 lb.-range. Business execs hate lugging around lots of stuff, and even the Pismo PowerBooks at 6 lbs. are too much.
Third, PowerPC chips will increase in terms of MHz. IBM already has 700-MHz G3s in the pipeline with designs that should move around 1 GHz by late next year. G4s have trouble achieving the same clock speeds, so Apple will have to figure out if they want G3s faster than G4s in the short-term. I'd guess not, but they may not have a choice. My best guess is that the offer multiple G4s and just let MacOS X—which can handle multiple processors at full-speed—deal with the issues.
There will be other changes—particularly as MacOS X ships—but these ones which will return Apple to profitability and lift the share price back up to a more accurate valuation. In the meantime, I'd be looking to buy more shares.
* * * * *
I've been playing the demo of MacSoft's Driver since it was released the other day and my initial impression is that the game, while graphically pretty and full of lots of nifty game play potential, is rendered virtually unplayable by a total disregard of physics and an AI system that cheats. And since there's no multi-player option, I'll pass.
December 4, 2000
Apple's got all manner of rebates flying around on their products this holiday season, making many of their products—particularly their G4 Cubes and PowerBooks very tempting. I priced Trinity on the Apple web site recently and the current cost is about $450 less than what I paid and that's with a bigger hard drive. Nice.
Apple's stock price too a big dive after their announcement that instead of making $165 million in last quarter, they were only going to make $110 million. From a high of around 52, the stock currently sits at 16.5 making it an incredible no-brainer of a purchase. If you take Apple's $4 billion short-term cash holdings into account, a share price of $16.5 is like paying $5.50 a share for the stock, a remarkable value.
I added 256 MB RAM to Trinity recently and turned off Virtual Memory. The results were surprising, even to me. First, I have not crashed even once since turning off Virtual Memory, and I'm a guy who pushes the technological envelope with these machines. Second, there is a noticeable speed increase with everyday applications. If you can afford it, adding more RAM to your Mac and turning off Virtual Memory may be one of the best investments you can make to improve your day-to-day computing experience.
October 10, 2000
Today's QuickTime—Live! keynote by Apple VP Phil Schiller, which I watched as a streaming QuickTime video, introduced a preview of QuickTime 5. First, though, he gave some QuickTime 4 stats:
- Not including Auto-Updates, QuickTime 4 has been downloaded 54 million times
- 6 million new Macintoshes have shipped with QuickTime 4 pre-installed
- 20,000 developers have licensed QuickTime 4 for inclusion with their own software
- 45 million QuickTime 4 CDs were included in cereal boxes
- All told, Apple estimates about 100 million copies of QuickTime 4 are in use
QuickTime 5 will be officially launched after they get out of the beta cycle. It offers several new CODECs including ShoutCast, Flash 4, Cubic VR and others. It also has a huge buffer (vs. the 3 second buffer in QuickTime 4) so bandwidth fluctuations won't stop audio and video cold as often.
September 28, 2000
Apple announced that fourth quarter earnings will be $110 million, $55 million below expectations. Their stock was off 45 percent in after hours trading, making it a good long-term purchase at this moment IMHO.
The shortfall was attributed to three things: (1) lower than expected education sales; (2) lower than expected September sales; and (3) poor sales of the Power Mac G4 Cube.
While I think education sales will come back, I continue to see big problems with the G4 Cube. Simple put, I have no idea who is gonna buy this thing, especially at that the $1799 price point. When they were introduced at MacWorld NY in July, I said:
My immediate reaction is that I'm not sure what target market this machine is aimed at, and the price points don't seem to be anything super (especially when a dual processor G4/450 is only $200 more). We'll see.
Well, I think we're seeing that I was right (hopefully nobody minds me saying "I told you so" in this instance). The G4 Cube is pretty, but beauty is only one criterion in buying a computer and it's usually not that high on the list. (All things being equal it can be a deciding factor, though.)
The best thing I can come up with for Apple to do is make the G4 Cube bigger so it can accomodate some PCI or AGP slots. Without expandability, I frankly would never buy one, and I'm not sure to whom I could recommend it over an iMac or G4 tower. Apple—notable Steve Jobs—is gonna need to figure this out, and sooner would be better than later.
September 14, 2000
Beleaguered Microsoft Corporation launches "Windows Me," the hideously named latest release in the Windows 95/98 franchise. Like the Windows 98 upgrade to Win 95, Win Me is a marginal upgrade at best, and one which would merit free download status if it were coming from Apple.
As CNet New.com reported in Windows Me release spells 98's demise, "There's nothing in it that says, 'I have to have this,'" said Neil McDonald, an analyst with Gartner. Like Win 98, McDonald says Windows Me will "become the de facto operating system through attrition."
Monopolistically enforced popularity notwithstanding, what of the OS itself? Does it offer anything in the way of compelling new features? The short answer is no.
Win Me offers three neat new features, all of which have some downside associated with them:
- Win Me boots about 15 seconds faster than Win 98. Unfortunately it appears that most problems in the OS are solved by rebooting. One reviewer resolved virtually every WinMe installation problem he encountered with a reboot. That made for a lot of restarts. (See We install Windows Me—and survive!)
- Microsoft has re-jiggered the horrid Start button-based interface a bit, and while most concede this to be improved in Win Me, it's still a terrific example of gawd-awful human interface design.
- The new System Restore option really captures the essence of Microsoft, I think: It sounds great until you look closer and then you realize all the problems it solves are problems which Microsoft has created. System restore works by taking a "snap shot" of the computer's state every 10 hours so that after the almost inevitable computer freeze, crash, and other common PC catastrophe, the user can back up 10 hours to the way the computer was before. Unfortunately, Win Me does NOT save anything other than system files during this 10 hour saves, so any user created documents, any third-party software, or, in fact, anything else on the computer remains vulnerable. Except now some users are going to think they're protected when they're not. Microsoft does it again.
Priced at $109, Windows Me offers virtually nothing other than the above-mentioned "features" which any Win 98 user couldn't just go download for free. As ZD Net writer John Spooner writes:
The bottom line, here, is that Microsoft has reached the point of diminishing returns with its Windows 9.x operating systems. If you want to buy the new OS and install it for fun, like I did, then more power to you. But you're not going to get much more than a PC that boots up more quickly. And that's a good thing -- because you'll be rebooting a lot.
Given yesterday's beta release of MacOS X, the forthcoming release of MacOS 9.1—which will probably be yet another free download from Apple, and the current performance of Mac OS 9.04, there's never been a better time for PC users to switch platforms.
September 13, 2000—Apple Expo 2000 (Paris)
Apple bumps the iBook, introduces the Mac OS X beta, offers ATI Radeon graphics cards, and leaves me with the fastest notebook on the planet. (Whew!)
The iBook now comes in two models. The regular iBook sports a 366-MHz G3 (up from 300), a 10 GB drive (up from 6), a FireWire port (nonexistent before), an AV port for audio/video output (nonexistent before), and the same ATI Rage Mobility 128 graphics controller (8 MB video RAM) found in the PowerBooks. They also dropped the price from $1599 to $1499. The iBook is available in the colors Indigo or Key Lime.
The iBook SE, or "Special Edition," was also bumped. The SE has all the new features of the regular iBook plus it is enhanced by a 466-MHz G3 (up from 366), a 20 GB drive (up from 6) and a DVD-ROM drive. The price of the iBook SE remains the same at $1799. It is available in the colors Graphite or Key Lime.
The long-awaited MacOS X beta is finally here. Although many will rush to give it a spin, I would advise most Mac users to wait for the final release version, especially if you need your Mac for any sort of mission critical kind of work. I could run MacOS X beta on Trinity or Zeke, but—even though I'm a reasonably competent trouble-shooter—I'm probably going to wait for the final release. At minimum I'm waiting a few months until some of the bugs are worked out of the beta. Those foolhardy enough to go for it, can order the beta through the Apple Store for $29.95.
ATI's new Radeon graphics cards are now a $100 build-to-order option for G4s on the Apple Store. As the Radeon cards are significantly faster than the ATI Rage 128 cards they follow, this should prove to be a worthwhile purchase for most people. Unfortunate, I think, that Apple didn't make them standard on the G4s, though.
Despite a host of rumors to the contrary, Apple did not release any new PowerBooks. As of this writing, Trinity remains the 500-MHz G3 portable king of the world, though I expect new PowerBooks will knock Trin from her perch before the year is out.
Regardless, most rumor sites have the new PowerBook running a 450- or 500-MHz G4 in a new case with virtually no other improvements. Because I find the current PowerBook look about as appealing as it possible in a portable and because the G3 actually runs as fast or faster than a G4 at the same clock speeds in non-Velocity Engine applications, Trin should hold up pretty well in the course of the next year or so. Of course in terms of usefulness, Trin's got a life span of at least 4-5 more years, minimum, I think. Great computers these PowerBooks!
September 12, 2000
Recent days have seen me playing a fair amount of Diablo, a third-person perspective AD&D-style fantasy game from Blizzard Entertainment. A big hit on the PC, it came to the Mac almost a year after its PC release and correspondingly enjoyed only moderate success.
Now available for $7.89 at Costco (thank you, Dennis!), Diablo is easily worth that purchase price. Having experienced QuakeWorld, I'm not a huge fan of single player games anymore, but Diablo does pretty well in that regard.
We tried multi-player Diablo on the 10BaseT ethernet network last LAN party with mixed results. Game play was fair, but moving into new dungeon levels resulting in horrible lag resulting in the death of half the party. I've yet to try Battle.net, the Internet-based networking solution, to see if that experience is any different.
Regardless, Diablo is easily worth $7.89. If you have Costco membership, go for it.
July 23, 2000—MacWorld NY 2000
News from Apple continues to be great. Prior to MacWorld Apple announced a 3rd quarter profit of $200 million. Revenue was $1.825 billion (a 17 percent increase from last year), with gross margins at 29.8 percent. Apple shipped 1,016,000 systems. (350,000 Power Mac G4s, 113,000 PowerBooks (of which mine was one!), 450,000 iMacs, and 100,000 iBooks. That's an 11 percent increase in "Pro" systems and a 13 percent increase in "Consumer" systems.
Signficantly, the Apple Store accounted for about 25 percent of the quarter's sales. Apple has expanded the Store to include over 150 third party products, and it looks to be a major online presence. On the bricks-and-mortar front, Circuit City will be begin carrying Apple products shortly.
And now to the MacWorld news—great as always, it seems:
- Apple introduced a new mouse to replace its much-loathed "hockey puck." The new mouse is gelcap-shaped and, interestingly, comes without a button. Instead the whole mouse acts as a button, a concept that is better experienced than written about, I think. This optical device purportedly has a superb resolution, and beta test reports (as of a few months ago) had it as a winner.
- Apple also rectified the problem with their short-form keyboard, introducing a new "Pro" keyboard with all 108 full-size keys. This includes keypad, full cursor and function keys. In addition, the keyboard has built-in controls for volume and ejecting CDs, DVDs, and other media. Both the keyboard and the mouse are available for $59 each via the Apple Store for those who might wish to order them. (The new mouse will ship across all product lines beginning immediately; the new keyboard will ship with G4s only.)
- Apple introduced three new G4 systems with huge advantages while retaining the pricing of the old models: First, the new low-end G4 ($1599) is now 400-MHz. The middle of the line G4 ($2499) is a 450-MHz dual processor model. The top-end is a dual processor 500-MHz machine. All G4s now come with gigabit ethernet standard, which is an amazing addition. (I still find 10-BaseT ethernet fast.)
- Mac OS X Beta is still on track for a September release.
- Microsoft, having just bought out long-time Mac game producer Bungie, announced that the long-awaited Halo would indeed be coming to Macintosh. MS is also bringing Age of Empires II, Flight Simulator 2002, and Links 2002 to the Mac, though I don't believe a time frame was announced.
- Microsoft Office 2001 for Mac is due soon as well.
- Apple iMac statistics: more than 3.7 million have shipped in two years, 44% of iMac users are new to the platform, and 89% are on the Internet. Four new iMac models were introduced: iMac - entry level unit featuring a 350 MHz G3, 64 MB RAM, 7.5 GB HD, slot-loading CD-ROM drive at $799 (shipping in September); iMac DV - 400 MHz G3, 64 MB RAM, 10 GB HD, slot-loading CD-ROM, FireWire at $999; iMac DV+ - 450 MHz G3, 64 MB RAM, 20 GB HD, slot-loading DVD-ROM, FireWire; $1299; and iMac DV Special Edition - 500 MHz G3, 128 MB RAM, 30 GB HD, slot-loading DVD-ROM, FireWire; $1499. Depending on the model, the new iMacs may be available in Ruby, Snow, Indigo, Sage, or Graphite.
- iMovie 2.0 is now shipping and will be available for $49 on the Apple web site.
- If you use Apple's MacOS 9 iTools iDisk technology, you'll be happy to know that additional the free 20 MB already available, you can purchase additional space on Apple's servers. Not useful for most folks, but a nice supplement for those who are interested.
- Finally, Apple also introduced the the G4 Cube, an 8" cube of a computer that combines several Apple technologies in what strikes me as a very strange way. First, the specs: The G4 Cube features a 56K Modem, 100-Base T Ethernet, USB, FireWire, and AirPort support. Two configurations will be available: 450 MHz G4, 64 MB RAM, 20 GB HD, and DVD-ROM for $1799 and 500 MHz G4, 128 MB RAM, 30 GB HD, and DVD-ROM for $2299. My immediate reaction is that I'm not sure what target market this machine is aimed at, and the price points don't seem to be anything super (especially when a dual processor G4/450 is only $200 more). We'll see.
- Apple introduced three new displays. All three displays share a new single cable that powers the monitor, delivers video, and carries a USB signal, reducing desktop clutter. First, a 17" CRT Studio Display (16" viewable) which uses a Mitsubishi 100% Flat Diamondtron tube and will carry a $499 price tag. Second, a 15" LCD Studio Display (meaning flat screen)with a $999 price. Finally, a 22" LCD Cinema Display like the old one but with the all-in-one cable.
Over all, another excellent MacWorld from the sounds of it. Being out of country, I've not had time to read the pundits, but initially I'm encouraged. Apple corporate performance remains strong. The new mouse and keyboard are, I'm certain, big steps forward. The G4 improvements are substantial, particularly at the middle- and high-end. The iMac revisions strike me as a little weak, but the price point changes—especially moving the low-end to $799—may really help in the education market.
True, G4 single-processor speeds should have been a little higher. And the G4 Cube product has me baffled. But, as the financial results atest, Apple's performing very well, and with Mac OS X coming with the next 8 months, the road continues to look very promising indeed.