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I actually wonder if instead, Apple might be peaking. I remember seeing, in academia, a lot of macbooks appearing around about when Mac OS X 10.1 first came ou

I actually wonder if instead, Apple might be peaking. I remember seeing, in academia, a lot of macbooks appearing around about when Mac OS X 10.1 first came out. This then later seems to have spread. In a possibly similar way, I now see a lot of grumbling about macs, people going back to windows and linux, and android phones popping up everywhere. Not a guarantee of failure, but I think a lot of people are getting annoyed, particularly by the limitations of the iPad, which feels increasingly crippled the longer you use it (can't just quickly edit a LaTeX file, run LaTeX on it, and then submit it to svn). This is just one tiny sample, at one university. It will be interesting to see if it spreads, or dies.

ionfish 15y ago
iBooks? PowerBooks? There was nothing called a "MacBook" when 10.1 came out in 2001. The first Apple laptop with that name was released in 2006.
6ren 15y ago
I think Apple's plan is to have a stream of new product categories. Already, the iPods make a shrinking contribution to revenue; the iPhone is being overtaken by android; but the iPad is still far, far ahead and growing. What will be next? And can they keep having a "next"? It's tough to keep on creating revolutions (but enormous fun if you can do it). Going from macs to linux puzzles me, because the mac OS is unix (though not linux) underneath: you have the best of both worlds, usability + power. The iPad is a simplified product (at present, anyway). Awkward for power users, but great for the huge mainstream who value simplicity over power. Apple is a consumer electronics company these days; a Sony. Geeks are a much smaller and less lucrative market.
- CJefferson 15y ago
  While Mac OS X is unix underneath, Apple are not open-source friendly. They have not updated gcc in about 5 years, and even though they now provide clang, they still provide no C++0x support, unlike linux and windows. The various package managers (brew, ports, fink) seem to often brake, and have packages broken for months.

ionfish 15y ago

iBooks? PowerBooks? There was nothing called a "MacBook" when 10.1 came out in 2001. The first Apple laptop with that name was released in 2006.

6ren 15y ago

I think Apple's plan is to have a stream of new product categories. Already, the iPods make a shrinking contribution to revenue; the iPhone is being overtaken by android; but the iPad is still far, far ahead and growing. What will be next? And can they keep having a "next"? It's tough to keep on creating revolutions (but enormous fun if you can do it). Going from macs to linux puzzles me, because the mac OS is unix (though not linux) underneath: you have the best of both worlds, usability + power. The iPad is a simplified product (at present, anyway). Awkward for power users, but great for the huge mainstream who value simplicity over power. Apple is a consumer electronics company these days; a Sony. Geeks are a much smaller and less lucrative market.

CJefferson 15y ago
While Mac OS X is unix underneath, Apple are not open-source friendly. They have not updated gcc in about 5 years, and even though they now provide clang, they still provide no C++0x support, unlike linux and windows. The various package managers (brew, ports, fink) seem to often brake, and have packages broken for months.