Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Actually the Google toolbar is built-in for Safari and Firefox.

Definitely graphics. Publishing and advertising run just about exclusively on Macs on the production end, and some print shops don't even bother to support Windows.

I understand the studio at Microsoft is full of them.

DeLong: "A decade ago it was very clear what was going to happen. Over time, more and more interesting applications would show up first on Windows and only later (or not at all) on MacOS, as Windows's superior market share attracted more software development brainpower."

Let's see... Microsoft loses a sizeable patent infringement case where they appropriated technology revealed to them by another company under the usual non-disclosure terms... I know of at least one case where Microsoft bought a company with a competing piece of software technology, and said technology never saw the light of day... at one point a few years ago, the standard question asked by venture capital firms when presented with a software proposal that would run on Windows was "What are Microsoft's plans in this area?"... the Microsoft version of an application is more efficient than competing products because it uses undocumented system calls...

There are days when I wonder if Microsoft actually plans on reducing innovation in the Windows world or if it's just an accident.

At the risk of stating the obvious, isn't the answer that (some) people will pay a premium price for a premium product? A $500 suit from Macy's may be 95% of a $1500 suit from Brooks Brothers, but some people can and will pay the extra for that extra bit of suitness that the premium suit gives you. Same for the Apple: that extra bit of thought in the UI and the hardware (and the marketing) is worth the premium to some people - and in Apple's case, for several different reasons. It seems to me that most consumer goods work this way. Heck, lots of people pump premium gas when they don't need to. Figure that one out.

Now, creating the qualities that command a premium - that's the hard part.

Julia. Microsoft is a software company, while Apple is a hardware company what writes software in order to make a profit selling hardware. Sure, they "compete" in the OS market. But that doesn't make Microsoft anti-Mac.

In fact, Microsoft is the largest manufacture of software for the Apple, OF COURSE THEY HAVE MACs at Microsoft. Whatever would make you think that they wouldn't?

I think the reasons Apple still exists parallel the reasons diesel-powered automobiles are still sold in North America. Diesel is not sold at all service stations. Diesel motors are louder than their gasoline-powered counterparts. But you'll get better fuel economy from them. You'll also have lower maintenance costs for diesel motors, and they generally last longer. Not surprisingly, you'll also pay a premium in North America to own one. This sounds a lot like owning an Apple.

Obviously, diesel-powered automobiles are not for everyone. But people who purchase them, swear by them and are generally repeat buyers.

I'm not an economist, but I think the primary reason Apple is still in business is because of Steve Jobs. He came back to the company in 1997 and prepared the company for survival as a niche player. He did so through the following objectives:

1) He slashed Apple's computer product offerings from a confusing mosaic to a simple 2x2 matrix: a consumer and professional line each comprised of a desktop and portable. This had two benefits. It eased marketing -- "Do I need an iMac or a PowerMac?" vs "Do I need a PowerMac 5500, 6500 or 7300?". It also streamlined R&D.

2) He picked up the slack in software development where third party developers were dropping the ball, or would be incapable of carrying it any significant distance for the long haul.

3) Objective 2 was made a lot easier by adopting NeXTStep and its object-oriented frameworks. The "Cocoa" frameworks, though more than a decade old, are only now being approached in terms of ease-of-development on the Win32 side. An environment that facilitates easy development is attractive to third party developers. It is often said that one Cocoa developer can be as productive as 10 developers using traditional frameworks. Speaking as a software developer who has recently taken up Mac OS X development, I concur. Apple's development environment makes it easy to develop powerful applications that offer a great, consistent user experience.

4) Jobs is a visionary who has a knack for seeing the big picture 5-7 years away. He not only focusses Apple on making great implementations of good ideas. But he keeps Apple's focus away from poor implementations of ideas that have yet to be proven good. For instance, the Newton was not only ahead of its time when it was introduced, it was ahead of its time when Jobs decided to kill it. Sony has only just realized (this past week announcing it's leaving the PDA market) that PDAs are a dead-end technology. They will not exist 7 years from now. Cell phones will, and already are, inheriting many of the features that are PDAs' forté. What will be interesting is to see where the iPod is headed. I have a feeling that Jobs will eventually roll into the iPod, cell phone (or WiFi phone) and PDA functionality. Jobs not only has a great track record of unveiling successful products (i.e. the Apple II, iMac, iPod) but he has a great track record of determining which products will be failures and taking appropriate action before they hurt the bottom line; the Mac G4 Cube being a glaring exception. Remember, this is a guy who Dean Kamen ultimately refused to listen to during the Segway's development and whose opinion was isolated from the more commonly held ones of other supposed visionaries like Jeff Bezos. Where's the Segway now?

I am of the opinion that by meeting or implementing these objectives, Apple passed an inflection point in 2002. The company has now moved away from fighting to survive and can now focus on growing. It'll be interesting to see where Apple is in 5 years. Unlike 5 years ago, I think you'd have to be crazy to predict they'd be out of business.

So does this mean you'll need to buy a higher end PC (well with 32 bit AMD, higher end is $750) when Rome Total War is released this fall?

A quick look at the SEC filings shows that, in the 9 months before the end of March, MS spent $6.12 billion on R&D, while Apple spent only $242 million. Maybe it's cheaper to develop products that are useful to the end user than it is to try to develop a DRM'ed system, proprietary web standards, and other manifestations of pure effin' evil.

And as for the survival of OS X, and other alternative OSes, Microsoft is currently working on new web standards which will be proprietary, protected by patent law, and will only run on Internet Explorer (which is already discontinued on OS X). They'll come out with the new Windows, scheduled for 2006. Supposedly they'll deliver a better experience for the end user, and do what Java applets were supposed to do 7 years ago.

If web developers use that technology in any significant number, eventually you'll be essentially shut out of the web if you don't run IE, and therefore Windows. Given that IE has over 90% market share I think it's likely that developers will take advantage of that technology. That's the biggest threat to Apple (and Linux) today (and the Linux community is very worried).

I'm no fan of Microsoft (I'm posting this from Konqueror running on my Fedora Core 2 installation) but I'd like to correct one thing rps said above:

Microsoft's enormous R&D budget does not principally go to "DRM" and "proprietary web standards", and other "evil". Over the past decade, Microsoft Research has hoovered up an enormous number of top researchers in every area of computer science, from programming languages to databases to human-computer interfaces to cryptography. MSR is second only (perhaps) to IBM Research in all-around computer science research capability.

Apple's research budget is much smaller because its research division is much more modest. I have literally never seen a single publication at a top computer science conference by an Apple Computer researcher. By constrast, MSR papers are a regular fixture at the top conferences (POPL and PLDI) in my subfield (programming languages).

Also, my impression is that the reason Apple has survived its missteps is not so different from the reason Microsoft survived its own missteps: Apple has always had enormous cash reserves, enough to muddle through the rough patches that are inevitable for any large company in an industry as volatile as computing technology. (Plus, the big investment from Microsoft in 1997, close to Apple's nadir, couldn't have hurt.)

Apple's recent *prosperity* is much more interesting than their mere *survival*. About that, I think Anonymous and Tom's explanations are fairly convincing.

Premium price for Macs? I'm not sure what you mean by this. Macs are awfully competitive on price when you actually compare features and what comes with the box (not to mention not having to pay for all sorts of additional features like anti-virus software--at least so far). Macs cost more is a canard which ought to die.

Speaking of viruses, the logic here seems to be that since Mac does not suffer from viruses it is not a serious operating system because people don't want to spend the time to attack it. As a Mac fan, having to put up with this kind of stuff gets pretty tedious.

In some ways, the computer industry is more conservative and changes less than people imagine-- Microsoft, Apple, Intel, IBM, UNIX (now in the guise of linux)... even VMS... have been around for quite a while, are still with us, and don't show any signs of disappearing any time soon. Unlike the other long-term players, Microsoft and Intel haven't had an existence-threatening crisis-- not yet, anyway.

People insist on applying principles better suited to automobile or steel manufacturing to the software industry. So MS sells 300 (?) million copies of Windows per year, and Apple only 15 (?) million copies of OSX. Perhaps MS spends 4 (?) times as much on development as Apple. Apple can still be profitable, because MS doesn't deign to reduce its prices to price OSX out of the market (and is much, much richer for it). The only competitive stick left to Microsoft, the threat of withdrawing interoperability with other operating systems from Windows, is expressly prohibited by antitrust law.

Even at $50, OSX would still be very profitable for Apple. At $129, margins are sustainable indefinitely.

Macs are more expensive because they sell fewer units and the hardware platform is more restricted. But this allows Apple to deliver better quality. The analogy to diesel cars seems apt.

Microsoft has to allow for a dozen or so different video cards, for example, each with different versions of the driver software. And so on for disks, memory (RAM), and everything else. Even CPU's. Apple severely controls and limits the hardware variation, making testing the software component that much easier.

Apple could have tweaked the design of the G5, for example, during the development phase in response to a bug. Regardless of whether the bug is in hardware or software. Same goes the other way, hardware glitches can be discovered and covered up in software, if need be.

Much less so for Microsoft. Intermittent failures in misconfigured or misselected hardware can make Microsoft look very bad, as Microsoft can't control the users configuration.

Also, the constellation of application programs on desktop computers is no longer changing in a dynamic way. The apps are getting standardized and MS competitors can match MS quality. How much better can you be at email, web browsing, and word processing? Mainstreaming voice recognition has been just around the corner for 5 years, and will be for at least another 5, I'll bet.

Most big companies run proprietary apps on their PC's, which locks them into the wintel platform for decades to come. But those shops locked in to Macs, or just used to Macs, have little reason to shift over. Especially in the niche areas of publishing and graphics, Apples' core turf.

I have a feeling that Jobs will eventually roll into the iPod, cell phone (or WiFi phone) and PDA functionality.

I hope so. I'd also like to fold in a half decent digital camera, ability to sync with my Mac via WiFi (no wires, please), and voice recognition for data input. All these things are coming, but not soon enough for me. Part of it is the difficulty of getting all that into a single small package, but I know I'd have no problem with something about the size of the first generation of cell phones, which were bricks by comparison with the current generation. Heck, even something the size of the Newton would be fine, as long as it worked reliably.

"I have a feeling that Jobs will eventually roll into the iPod, cell phone (or WiFi phone) and PDA functionality."

Should have been in italics above, quoting Anonymous from upthread. Oops.

Brad talks about Apple's new 802.11g_router/USB_print_server/Music_Streaming_ Converter and people compare Apple's R&D budget with Microsoft's.

Wrong Comparison. Try Dell or any of the other box pushers. They spend nothing on R&D, and it shows.

None of the technology in this little box is new. But only Apple put the R&D into figuring out how to cram it into a tiny easy-to-use package and sell it for $129.

On the software side, Apple keeps steamrolling along with MacOSX because they're building on a codebase that is not a pile of poo.

And note how they manage to leverage Open-Source to great advantage.

1) Read Eric S Raymond's rant ( http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html ) about the wretched user interface to the CUPS printing system. Now fire up PrintCenter.app. Guess what? You're looking at a user interface to CUPS that doesn't totally suck.

2) Look at what Apple did with KHTML, turning out a world-class, highly standards-compliant browser (Safari) and HTML-rendering Framework for MacOSX (WebCore) in record time. And they contributed their changes back to KHTML, so that KDE users benefit too.

How much did MS spend integrating their crappy IE browser into the core OS? Mmmmm. That was money well-spent.

The third, and shakiest, leg are the 3rd party software vendors and their willingness (or lack thereof) to develop for MacOSX.

As I look through my Applications folder, one of the striking things is relatively large number of applications which are either freeware or commercial software from small ISVs. Partly this is my choice -- I prefer to use Mesa ( http://www.plsys.co.uk/mesa.htm ), a Cocoa-based spreadsheet by a small ISV, which is cheaper ($39) and better than Excel -- and partly it is the wealth of highly-polished apps by small ISVs for the platform.

To a large extent that's due to Cocoa/XCode, which cuts development costs. And partly because it's actually viable for small ISVs to be "big fish in a smaller pond."

(Also striking is that I haven't taken much advantage of the large number of open-source X_Windows applications (the GIMP, etc) that run under MacOSX. Just haven't found the need, though it's nice to know they're there.)

No-one has mentioned the obvious point.
Apple is surviving and even thriving because of OS X, and thus because of open source software. Apple has decided that its role is to be the guy who takes OSS material and packages it into a form that's useful, not just to "mere mortals" but to pretty much anyone who has a life and isn't interested in spending hours dicking around getting various packages on their machine to work together.
Thus the success of Apple is an indication of the success of open source.
The success of open source is firstly an indication that the world is not all about money, regardless of what economists seem to believe --- that there are individuals who do things to make the world a better place and do not regret their not cashing out their ideas.
It is secondly an indication of the value of open information. Things can happen rapidly under open source, even with small teams, because people are not constantly re-inventing the wheel. In theory, of course, the same is supposed to be true at Microsoft --- that someone on the COM team shouldn't have to re-invent code to solve a problem solved by someone on the Dev Studio team. In practice, I expect MS is just like the (very) large software I worked for where there's certainly no culture of sharing software; papers are not written explaining the interesting problems one solved in the last year, blog entries are not posted describing unexpected problems encountered; flame wars do not errupt around how best to structure a piece of code, wars that involve the participation of random interested outsiders who frequently have useful things to contribute ("the problem with the approach you propose is that you ignore the situation of xyz, and since I work in the field of xyz I care a lot that you get this right").
Sure, in theory, you might be able to get permission to view the code written by another part of the company, if you're willing to jump through the various hoops. But the infrastructure to make this useful isn't there --- you simply don't know which part of the extant source base would even be interesting and relevant to your problem.
I think this reflects a basic problem with managers who are not academics and not engineers --- being unaware of the realities of science and engineering, they have no concept of just how much science and engineering build on the past, and are not reinvented by each generation. Likewise, they simply have no clue just how much value there is in creating a similar infrastructure for source code. Why else, for example, do so many companies (including MS) keep reinventing something like crypto algorithms and protocols, even though there is a long history of how their ideas are invariably worse than those that have been discussed publicly?

Of course the worrying aspect about this, in the larger sense, is that this mindset is now setting IP policy for the US, and apparently has no idea that it is close to killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The merger of NeXT and Apple should be a case study in how to execute one of those right. It was the successful execution of that merger that saved both organizations. Some people got burned in that merger, as in every merger, but the outcome is truly remarkable. I've survived a few mergers in my career, and I am continually astounded at how well the Apple/NeXT merger succeeded.

Total cost of ownership includes blood, sweat, and tears. If you own a computer, you are a system manager. It is far far easier to manage a Macintosh system than it is to manage a Windows system.

Installation and deinstallation couldn't be simpler, the system never crashes, applications that hang are easily dealt with, and viruses are limited, not because of limited sales, but because OS X is built on a Unix base and much better programmers than the code kiddies who attack MicroSoft systems have spent the last thirty years going through all the hacking issues from both sides of the fence.

Where's the mystery? You can still buy a new Jaguar or Peugot, even though the product has driven successive manufacturers into bankruptcy.

It's the same part of human nature that gave us the Monkees and the 'Reagan Legacy'. It helps us feel unique as we change ourselves to meet the needs of a mass-produced machine.

OK you Mac heads. Here's a question. What's the preferred way to buy a Mac online?

I currently live in Texas with a house full of Dells. But I'm due for an upgrade to a new machine with a flat panel display and I've about reached my limit with Windows. Plus, now that I moved to Texas, Michael Dell wants to charge me both shipping and sales tax, and the thought of moving on to some other off-brand of PC leaves me cold. So I'm once again looking wistfully in the direction of Macs.

I was a Mac fanatic long ago in the past, and owned a series of Macs from my very first no-hard drive model as an undergrad in 1984 to my last gray-scale powerbook as a grad student in 1994. In fact, I, together with a few of my dorm-mates at Reed College were the proud owners of one the very first batches of Macs to come off the assembly line in 1984. As an alumni of Reed, Steve Jobs cut some sort of deal with the college in early 84 to provide brand new Macs to every group of 4 Reed students who wanted one. We thought we were really living on the cutting edge, and I guess compared to my old electric typewrite, we were.

Since then my worklife in 100% Windows office environments has gradually pushed me over to the dark side and a long series of Dell desktops and laptops.

So if I want to go back, where does one start shopping for Macs online? Do you go straight to the Apple online store? Or are there cheaper and better distribution channels for the Mac cognoscenti?

Paul -- I'm as pro-Mac as can be, but PLEASE, they cost more - a lot more - and you just can't get around that. Don't spin it. Apple is exploiting its base because they can.

Apple's users and developers have had a love-hate relationship with the company from the beginning. Apple simply REFUSES to follow a market-share growth strategy, sacrificing the long-term good of the company in favor of a short-term profit strategy. Even when they released the Mac Plus, they could have charged $100 less per machine had they only paid the CEO a few million that year...

This is not to excuse Microsoft, or the pass the Bush administration gave them to continue blatantly violating the law.

I want to add something. GET A MAC.

I used to be the computer geek in college that everyone came to with questions because I knew all of the backslash-X-comma-LL stuff. But when I started using a Mac it was just so wonderful to be able to actually GET WORK DONE instead of holding onto all that computer expertise. I was one of the first Mac developers. (Owned one of the first Mac software companies)

I currently use a PC laptop, because of the requirements of various jobs I have held in the PC world. At home we recently chose a new PowerBook for my wife over a similarly-equipped PC laptop. I have to say that every aspect of using this machine is just so elegantly executed and wonderful that I recommend a Mac over a PC for any user under almost any circumstances, except where required by your work.

Kent,

The Apple Store is definitely one place to buy Macs. The thing about Apple is they are pretty adamant about pricing. I have a friend that works for a very well known chain of stores that's notorious for getting the lowest pricing from vendors. They've been interested lately in stocking some Apple computers and even with their volume purchases, they cannot get that great of a deal out of Apple. So, in terms of pricing, you can never go wrong by buying directly from Apple.

One thing you may be interested in is buying a refurbished Mac from the online store. Go to the Apple Store (Online) and scroll down the page. On the left side, you'll see a red tag with the title "Special Deals". From there, you can purchase refurbished products that, from what I've heard are just as good as new. You can get them at quite a hefty discount too. For instance, right now they're selling a refurbished dual 2.0 GHz G5 for $2399 vs $2999 new. However, updated models are expected "any day now" and that pricing may drop further.

I would highly suggest checking out a brick & mortar Apple retailer though. If you don't have an Apple Store near you like myself (damn you Apple, open a Canadian store!), check out one of the mom & pop Apple shops that are bound to exist in your neck of the woods. You'll want to play around with various models because Mac OS X is different than anything you've ever seen. It also performs quite differently on Apple's consumer line vs its professional line. This will also give you a chance to test out the build-to-order items on a Mac. Remember that many BTO items like the internal bluetooth adapter, cannot be added after purchasing your Mac.

Oh, and if you do make a purchase buy as much RAM as you can possibly afford. I'm dead serious when I say 1 GB should be a reasonable consideration, and more wouldn't be a waste. OS X itself isn't so much a RAM hog, as it is fertile ground for serious multi-tasking. Many OS X users leave all their apps open indefinitely. For instance, I currently have 16 applications running and I'm just getting started for the day. This multi-tasking will go a lot more smoothly if these apps can be kept in RAM.

In general, I have found that my preferred Mac community is the Ars Technica Macintosh Achaia (http://episteme.arstechnica.com/6/ubb.x?a=frm&s=50009562&f=8300945231). If you have any questions, definitely check that forum out as there are a lot of great people there to help. There is even the odd Microsoft Macintosh software developer on there looking to see how they can improve Office for the Mac.

Actually the Google toolbar is built-in for Safari and Firefox.

The thing built in to Firefox is not the Google Toolbar that is available for Windows, it is a much more limited tool.

Re: buying a Mac.

Anonymous at 10:37 AM is right that the base price of the machine isn't really different if you buy directly from Apple, or from another vendor. However, vendors like MacMall (www.macmall.com) and MacWarehouse (now part of CDW) will often sweeten the deal by throwing in a RAM upgrade, discounts on other equipment, etc. So, it is worth doing some comparison-shopping.

Kent-
I second what "anonymous" above has to say (especially about RAM), though if you're after a bargain Mac, looking at Small Dog Electronics and at dealmac.com regularly can get you some pretty OK deals. (I'm writing this from my 5.5 year old G3 tower, running OS X 10.3, which still runs fast and solid even with 15-20 apps going.)

Alternately, if you're after the higher end of the line, be aware that while the whole laptop line was recently updated, the G5 desktop is due for an update, possibly at the developer's conference this month. (Maybe even earlier.) Once that happens, the "now" machines get cheaper, and the "later" machines will last you longer.

Sorry folks, the only reason that Apple has survived is that it got into the education market big time early on. It was a smart move theoretically and practically. Theoretically, people will stay with the system they learn on, and if they learn in school, they probably learned on a Apple. Practically, once a bureaucracy (ie: a school system) sets off on a particular road, it takes a pretty good earthquake to take it off of that road. The results for Apple was that even during their most trying times, they had a steady market for their products. This is what kept the banks from foreclosing on Apple, they could always show business coming in, fairly large orders to boot. To this day this is the market share that sustains Apple. If you take away sales to school systems, the market share drops precititously.

>>Sorry folks, the only reason that Apple has survived is that it got into the education market big time early on.

Not really. Apple has not even controlled a majority of the education market in years, and it is a slow turn market anyway. What has sustained Apple is the creative community (Photoshop/Avid) and their willingness to buy a new machine every year or two.

Apple's new drive back to the "consumer electronics" market is interesting though. They have managed to jump in there with the same model they have for PCs -- easy, stylish, quality, expensive -- and still made a splash. It really turned the uber-price-competitive CE market upside down when it became obvious that a good mix of style and quality would suck signifigantly more out of peoples wallets.

Somewhat off topic, but in defense of Linux, the Eric Raymond rant linked above is obsolete.

At least under Debian with Gnome 2.6, CUPS printing Just Works. All CUPS printers on the local net show up automatically, and with the gnome-cups-manager package, there is a printers control panel with which even Aunt Tillie should be able to add new ones easily. I haven't seen the MacOS X version, but it's hard for me to see how the Gnome system could be improved at this point.

One reason that Apple is doing well is primarily because Steve Jobs is the one of the sharpest deal-makers in the business world. He's gone up against people like Ross Perot, Michael Eisner, Gil Amelio and Bill Gates and always came away with the sweeter end of the deal.

Another thing is that Jobs is a traditionalist in one way - He believes in creating value as a business model. He tends not to create value by buying and selling companies and shifting around the merger field. He has always focused on making good products that people will pay good money for. What a concept.

Brad

Eric Clemmons at Wharton has a nice theory of hyper-differentiation that explains the economics of delight. Something very applicable to Apple.

Basically, Clemmons shows how niche products such as the Macintosh can not just survive but thrive. Take a look at it.

here are some links to Clemmons work on hyperdifferentiation

http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~clemons/files/delight_info_paper_v2_1.pdf

Here's another one talking about end of insipidization in the beer industry dealing with microbrews (very applicable to the current topic)
http://www.efinancelab.de/home/events/archive/clemons.pdf

Its funny, really. Microsoft announced they were getting out of wireless hardware just a few weeks ago. Of course, they were in a commodity market pushing more of the "me-too" products. Now , that the Airport Express is out, will they themselves or will they push their legions of hardware vendors to produce a WMA version? (a crummy one at that, because Microsoft's objective is really to commodize the product, and the vendors will have to cut corners to eke out enough profit)

>>(Plus, the big investment from Microsoft in 1997, close to Apple's nadir, couldn't have hurt.)

Think about this: the week before this announcement was made Apple had several lawsuits in process against Microsoft, one of which - Quicktime code found in Microsoft's media player at the time - was a smoking gun and even the most diehard Microsoft apologists were admitting that they were going to lose this case.

Then Microsoft signs an agreement to continue the Office product for the Mac for 5 years and buys some non-voting Apple stock and all lawsuits are dropped.

Hmmm, well, I'm sure it was just coincidence

Dave Johnson opines:

"Paul -- I'm as pro-Mac as can be, but PLEASE, they cost more - a lot more - and you just can't get around that. Don't spin it. Apple is exploiting its base because they can."

That is just plain false. It is true that you can get cheap Winblows boxes. But when you compare the processor/cache (oh the cache is a BIG one), expandability, etc. you cannot go wrong with a Mac.

Note that the Pentium 4 (which you can STILL buy in most low end boxes) is analogous to the early G3s.

A case in point: I just got the G4 laptop: 1.3GHz processor, 1 gig RAM, 17inch screen for just under $2800. The company I work for, a Fortune 500, pays $2600 IN BULK for Dell Latitudes with 1.3 GHz Pentium 4. My laptop smokes at home; it blows at work in comparison.

Yojimbo is correct. And five minutes on Google will PROVE it to you. If you're interested in facts.

BTW, Apple -shortly after that 'investment'- invested $100 in Samsung. Does that mean Apple 'owns' Samsung?

Apparently, Mac OS 8 was boxed and ready to sell, with Netscape as default.

Yojimbo is correct. And five minutes on Google will PROVE it to you. If you're interested in facts.

BTW, Apple -shortly after that 'investment'- invested $100 in Samsung. Does that mean Apple 'owns' Samsung?

Apparently, Mac OS 8 was boxed and ready to sell, with Netscape as default.

Ooops!

I was much taken with the g4 cube, and i like the quiet operation of the imac, again in a super compact package.
But i would find it hard to live with a snazzy mouse without buttons.
Where is the right click, scroll wheel, and such conveniences that i take for granted?
Does OS X have an option yet to implement such indispensable tools?

>>Does OS X have an option yet to implement such indispensable tools?

You know, *OS 8* supported 3 button mouses and scroll wheels. This is just one of those old myths. I use a Logitech MX700 on my mac and I can use each of its 9 buttons.

dennis asks whether right-cicking and scrollwheels are supported. Answer: yes and yes. Effortlessly. Without driver installation. Just spend another $20 to replace the Apple optical mouse with, say, a Logitech optical mouse. I don't know why Apple doesn't move to a two-button/scrollwheel mouse as standard equipment, but I always giggle when this fact is cited as a deal-breaker.

Regarding the comments about the Google toolbar, you can install the full-featured one on Firefox, but Safari only has a Google search field built in.

Julia. Microsoft is a software company, while Apple is a hardware company what writes software in order to make a profit selling hardware. Sure, they "compete" in the OS market. But that doesn't make Microsoft anti-Mac.

Um, no, that doesn't. The fact that they tried to put Apple out of business for years suggests that at one time they were. They did a turnaround when Apple management changed and started bundling Windows software on new machines.

The "competition" for graphics software is a little more one-sided than the "competition" for OS software. Adobe skipped about four upgrades on Illustrator for Windows because Illustrator runs like a cow on Windows, and because Microsoft kept bundling in low-end graphics applications with shallower learning curves in unrelated software packages and satisfying the minimal graphics needs of most corporate software buyers.

Adobe eventually did put their windows software back on an active upgrade path around the time that Quark tried a hostile takeover of Adobe, who then produced their own (languishing) page layout software (Quark has never penetrated the Windows market in any significant way either).

Microsoft doesn't use Mac for graphics because they're so darn open minded. They use them because their own machines don't do the job as well and they can't find vendors to output their files.