bruceb news

Perhaps you saw the mainstream press breathlessly reporting Apple’s announcement that its upcoming Power Mac G5 system would be the “world’s fastest personal computer,” based on independent benchmark testing.

It’s not the first time Apple has used phony benchmarks to make outlandish claims, and this one unraveled practically before Steve Jobs left the stage after making the announcement. Here’s the summary of Apple’s latest debacle from Paul Thurrott’s newsletter:

”During his keynote address at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2003 in San Francisco earlier this week, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs told the excited audience that the company’s new Power Mac G5 systems–due in August–wouldn’t just match but would surpass the performance of similarly equipped high-end Pentium 4 and Xeon-based PCs from companies such as Dell.

[…] continued

Amazon has been eyeing the market for downloadable music for years, wondering how to jump in. The issue isn’t technology, it’s the business model, availability of content and music industry support.

There was an unconfirmed report yesterday that Amazon is talking to Apple about licensing Apple’s online music store. Apple’s store has been a surprising success, but it’s unlikely that Amazon would be interested until the tunes could be offered to Windows users as well as Mac users.

And there might be an interesting twist to that story. The music industry is watching Apple’s store like a hawk, in part to discover whether Apple can prevent the downloaded files from being traded freely. […] continued

Apple’s new music downloading service, iTunes, reported two million downloads in its first 16 days of operation, a startling success. I continue to hope that it falls flat, for the reasons I wrote up on May 1. If consumers sign up to digital rights management at a dollar a song chosen from an inadequate library, the industry will seize on it and carve it in stone – and our chances for a better deal will go down dramatically.

But if the service is successful, there might be another side effect. By any objective measure, Apple has been spectacularly unsuccessful at selling computers. […] continued

The press is gushing about Apple’s new iTunes service, hailing it as the first appealing online service for downloading music. Articles hailed it as “revolutionary” (Wininformant), “unique” (The New York Times) and “we’re impressed” (Forbes). Today’s Press Democrat goes so far as to write an editorial to that effect, in addition to the glowing articles it published in the business section in the last couple of days.

Reality check.

The Apple service implements digital rights management (“DRM”) just as thoroughly as the other online services. All Apple has done is loosen the strings ever so slightly.

These are not mp3 files. […] continued

An interesting comment today from Paul Thurrott in the Windows Magazine newsletter:

”Because Steve Jobs gave his Macworld address just days before Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates presented his 2003 International Computer Electronics Show (CES) keynote address, not comparing the two events is impossible. The most obvious difference is support: Apple appears to be interested in going it alone, even to the extent of creating applications that don’t break new ground or introduce new product categories but instead compete with existing third-party applications. Meanwhile, Gates’s address continually touted Microsoft’s many industry partners, such as the hardware makers working on Media2Go and Smart Personal Object Technology (SPOT) devices, Media Center PCs, and Tablet PCs.

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I hear it from people all the time: PCs might have some advantages, but boy, there’s nothing like a Mac for graphics and video work, especially if you’re a professional.

Well, nonsense. The Adobe programs are identical on either platform, and PCs have long outperformed more expensive Macs. And the gaps in price and performance are getter larger. In a recent test, a Dell PC significantly outperformed a significantly more expensive Power Mac for image and digital-video editing. According to the Digital Video Editing web site, the PC has “slaughtered” the Mac again, with the PC running all the Adobe PhotoShop and Adobe After Effects benchmarks nearly twice as fast as the Mac. […] continued

Reading the papers might have given you the impression that Apple is a strong contender, with a solid operating system, fabulous products, and booming sales.

Sadly, the business news is frequently reported with the same quest for sensationalism and lack of objectivity that has poisoned political reporting. Nothing has changed for Apple. It makes products that are buggier than you think, and it sells them to a vanishingly small number of people.

Apple introduced its peculiar iMacs last year, spiffed them up this year, got rapturous press coverage – but nobody is actually buying them. Macintosh shipments were down 14% in the last quarter compared to the prior year. […] continued

Apple has a problem – its users aren’t flocking to the new operating system, OS X, as fast as Apple needs. So Apple came up with a plan to fix their problem. Guesses, anyone? Innovative new features? Lower prices? No, no. Apple is going to release a new line of Macs starting early next year that will refuse to boot Mac OS 9 or any OS other than Mac OS X. As an interesting thought experiment, imagine what federal regulators would say if Microsoft tried a similar tactic.

Gateway is taking aim at Apple Computer and the flat-panel iMac. Gateway has had an all-in-one, flat-panel-based Profile PC series for far longer than Apple’s new iMac. The new Gateway Profile 4 outperforms the iMac for considerably less money ($999 versus $1299 for starter models). Gateway’s new ads use the tagline “Think Smarter,” a play on Apple’s “Think Different” ad campaign.

Apple deserves more abuse than it gets for the overpriced iMacs, but I’m not sure I would buy Gateway’s alternative. I’m not a big fan of all-in-one PCs, and Gateway is still on shaky ground, with a projected loss of $200 million to $250 million this year on revenues of $5 billion. […] continued

Apple announced an upgrade of OS X, its new operating system, from 10.1 to 10.2. The upgrade will be released in late August. It fixes a bunch of bugs in previous versions, and adds a handful of new features. Keep in mind, this is not a big change, like the change from Windows 98 to Windows XP. This is just a collection of bug fixes.

And the price for every single Mac user in the world will be $129 – thirty dollars more than the cost of an upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows XP. It doesn’t matter if you bought a new computer last week, or if you go to the store tomorrow and buy OS X 10.1. […] continued