[finboy]

I think Apple would be well-suited to offer to SPONSOR Adobe's participation and help them make a big noise. For Adobe to skip MWNY seems like a really really bad thing to me.

Esp. for some lame-o reason like penny-pinching. Who does their planning, anyway? Seems that they would do all within their power to get to the biggest Mac event of the year.

[BRussell]

MWNY is supposed to be all about OSX, and if Adobe doesn't have any products ready, I guess they just don't even want to be there.

It is bad. You'd think they'd be able to at least show up and demo something or give updates on their work, like MS.

[opallaser]

I think it's very bad. Right now Adobe are making some interesting decisions that have some designers scratching their heads.

1. GoLive 5.0 - It's a horrible update to GoLive 4.0 - In theory it offers some fantastic features (smart objects etc) but in practice it is buggy and un-reliable. Adobe's current web tools, with the exception of Photoshop are a standard below Macromedia's.

2. The upgrade to Pagemaker. Why ? Wasn't In-Design supposed to replace Pagemaker ? Why are they still putting development time into an app that is seemingly destined to be axed. Perhaps In-Design hasn't had the market penetration that Adobe thought it would and it's hoping for extra revenue from pagemaker upgrades.

3. Adobes complete lack of foresight in not having apps ready soon after the release of OS X - How can a company that makes products for creatives be seen to be ignoring the creatives platform of choice.

Adobe is in an interesting place right now. In terms of Web design they are fighting what looks to be a losing battle with products like Flash and Dreamweaver dominating the market. Macromedia has won the hearts of web creatives everywhere and are consistently delivering stable and innovative products (ie Site Spring) while Adobe continue to rely on Photoshop to keep them in the game.

Here's hoping that they have someting major planned (ie Native versions of Photoshop and Illustrator) for release in the not too distant future.

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by opallaser:
<STRONG>3. Adobes complete lack of foresight in not having apps ready soon after the release of OS X - How can a company that makes products for creatives be seen to be ignoring the creatives platform of choice.</STRONG>

The creative's platform of choice is OS9.
Until OSX can compete, why would they bother? OS9 is faster. Speed is needed. OSX is RAM hungry. So is Photoshop.
I couldn't imagine running Photoshop in OSX with anything less than 512 megs.

All hail the king...

[chris v]

I agree w/Cypher--but what we have is that Adobe and Apple have me in a classic logic loop.

Pros Won't upgrade to OS X until Adobe ships Photoshop and Illustrator.

Adobe doesn't rush to ship Photoshop and Illustrator, because pros aren't running OS X yet.

I'm at least waiting for 10.1/9.2 to make the leap. I hope that Adobe is just playing their cards close to their chest and that there aren't real roadblocks to porting their flagship programs. Quark is moving really slow too, and those two combined could really hurt Apple's plans about the timing of OS X adoption amongst those of us who make some portion of our livings doing design work on Macs. Sure hope S.J. is capable of some arm-twisting here. Mainly, just because I dream of a day where I don't have top restart my Tower twice.

CV

[WDL]

Originally posted by chris v:
<STRONG>I agree w/Cypher--but what we have is that Adobe and Apple have me in a classic logic loop.

Pros Won't upgrade to OS X until Adobe ships Photoshop and Illustrator.

Adobe doesn't rush to ship Photoshop and Illustrator, because pros aren't running OS X yet.

I'm at least waiting for 10.1/9.2 to make the leap. I hope that Adobe is just playing their cards close to their chest and that there aren't real roadblocks to porting their flagship programs. Quark is moving really slow too, and those two combined could really hurt Apple's plans about the timing of OS X adoption amongst those of us who make some portion of our livings doing design work on Macs. Sure hope S.J. is capable of some arm-twisting here. Mainly, just because I dream of a day where I don't have top restart my Tower twice.

CV</STRONG>

In my opinion money is not the reason. I think Adobe is taking a "time out" to
watch how OS X gets accepted.

They already have a large customer base operating in OSs 8.x & 9.x - they're sitting
back to take the pulse of how X does before they decide to make the massive
commitment needed to bring everything to X.

Unfortunately, other developers will probably watch Adobe as the "weather vane"
to how they should respond. Not reassuring!

Thank God MS and its excellent Mac Business unit with its excellent team is going
full speed ahead. Can you imagine the consequences if MS did the same as Adobe?

MS haters can flame me (I'm wearing asbestos underwear) but face the facts. MS
is the best supporter Apple has, and thank goodness they're putting their money
where there mouth is.

If anyone thinks Apple would be better off if MS suddenly announced it was stopping
any further development of software for the Mac - think again!

OS X is not going to have the maturity and developer support necessary until 2003. In the meantime, it's a work in progress.

Despite the geniuses at Apple - miracles are for the Bible.

WDL

[ 06-23-2001: Message edited by: WDL ]

[rambo47]

This is a huge blunder on Apple's part. The boys and girls in Cupertino should have been working hand-in-hand with Adobe from the deveolpment stages of OS X to be sure Adobe was on board and up to speed. Adobe doesn't need Apple. Apple does need Adobe. The key to Apple's continued success is developer support and the folks that make Photoshop et al are a major player. At the very least, a demo version of Photoshop for OS X should have been ready at the release of X. Spend some of that $4 billion to help cover development costs and get these apps native to OS X. So help me, if I hear Steve whining about a missed profit forcast due to slow acceptance of OS X, I'll paint a huge Apple logo on the front door of the Church of Satan. In color.

[pathogen]

When was the last time Adobe wasn't at a San Francisco Macworld? They've never done this before to their most sacred platform's party. Its one thing when Corel does a cut back on trade show envoys, but Adobe is a Macworld destination booth!

I wonder if it has anything to do with ex-Adobe Vice President John Brandon joining Apple as its newest V.P... Could there be bad blood going on here? Brandon hasn't been with Adobe in 4 years, but he just joined Apple two weeks ago.

Also, Steve Jobs mentioned the OS X "stragglers" would bring their apps in the late fall of 2001. He said that with more than just a hint of bitter acrimony in his keynotes over the last year. Has this become a power struggle? Did he know last year that Adobe was being a wallflower, and is he angry enough to insight Adobe to shy away? Or is Adobe shying away to show Apple who holds the power in this relationship?

And if Adobe really is cash strapped, then why aren't they leaning on Apple to give them better advertising tie-ins? One smart deal there could offset a Macworld budget, a couple would be smart marketing. Who's slacking off at Apple and Adobe to let opportnities slide through the cracks? Or is it a politcal power struggle?

Questions, questions, questions.

[ 06-23-2001: Message edited by: pathogen ]

[plaidpjs]

I, like everyone else, am a little dismayed at Adobe deciding not to attend MacWorld NY. However, I also have a very different view on a number of things that you all have posted in this thread so far. now, i know some of this is going to get flamed, or maybe even ignored, and it might steam a few heads, but please, at least read my commentary all the way through before replying.

• Adobe's Reasons for Not Attending MWNY Are Flat Out Lies - accoprding to the PR Director Adobe will not be attending MWNY because of "economic" reasons. The rest of the comments made by the PR Director would lead one to believe that Adobe does not have the money to support a presence (booth) at the event. This, however, is completely contradictory to all of their primping over their Q1 and Q2 earnings reports that put them way ahead of the rest of the computer market. (more on this below)

• MWNY is All About OS X - an earlier poster mentioned that it appears that if Adobe doesn't have any OS X stuff to show it appears they don't want to come at all. Well, truth be told, Adobe DOES have OS X product. They demoed InDesign on OS X at Seybold. I have heard from others that they have seen a beta version of PhotoShop and Illustrator running native OS X. Adobe has OS X product, and they have news regarding upcoming releases that they could share.

• Apple Needs Adobe - I'm sorry, but this is pure poppycock. What all the "creatives" seem to forget, is that just catering to a "creative" market was killing the company. Just catering to the "creative" market has gotten Apple a whopping 5% (and declining) market share. Sure, "creatives" have been Apple's core user group and the sustaining force to date for the company, but all the while PCs and Windows have been making more and more forays into the arena. With companies like Adobe, making their products available on both platforms, Apple has become more of a conscious choice for "creatives" than ever before. And, that can be said without even factoring in the impact of the Internet.

• Other Companies Will Wait to See What Adobe Does - Again, IMHO, this is pure garbage. Macromedia is not waiting to see what Adobe does, they are actively moving their applications over to OS X. Microsoft is moving ahead with OS X programs. MANY companies are moving ahead with X product. From a business standpoint, for Adobe to wait to see how OS X shakes out is perhaps one of the most short-sighted things they could do. For all its shortcomings, and all the whining and complaining from Apple "traditionalists", OS X is doing something that every other Mac OS couldn't, it's attracting NEW users to the Mac platform. Companies that bring compotent products to market first will be in a better position to capitalize on what I see as a rebirth of sorts in Apple's market share. (this isn't an impossibility, it really isn't)

So, what am I trying to say... well, first, there are a number of ways to interpret Adobe side-stepping MWNY. However, I think, given their lame excuse for not attending, that Adobe's new "management" has decided it is better to foresake their roots than anger or otherwise lose out on the Windows-based piece of the pie. Which means, of course, that while there have been demos of OS X versions of Adobe's software, they will probably be a long time in coming. Almost the same can be said for Quark, but I actually expect them to surprise us. I've heard a little something here and there that, if valid, could prove to be very interesting come MWNY.

Second, while Adobe may be slow-moving, opr even out of the Apple picture all together, there have been plenty of viable alternatives coming up to take its place. Macromedia is the foremost to spring to mind, and from what i've seen after using the Freehand demo for a few days now, they could very well get more of their products to OS X by MWNY and really give Adobe a run for their money in terms of market dominance. Then, there's also Corel. I started my career as a "creative" on a PC, using the CorelDraw slate of products (forgive me, I did not know any better at the time). Early on, for a PC program, Corel was incredibly easy to use and feature rich, they could very well bring a GREAT product to OS X before the end of the year. Of course, there's also the GIMP and TIFFany, as well as Create. All new products for the Mac platform, and two out of three written in Cocoa. none of them are "complete" at the moment, but they do have a lot of promise.

Third, while every Apple loyalist and their mother may claim that Apple is foresaking their core market, truth be told, Apple is doing what is right for the future of the company. OS X and OS X Server, give Apple a consistent, branded, well-defined set of OSes for clients and servers. They have a unified interface, they have power and stability, they take advantage of modern comptuing practices and architectures, and they open up the Mac platform to a larger computing audience then just the "creative" market. Couple that with Apple's new marketing strategies and the new Apple retail stores and I see a very bright future for the company, as do a number of others, including the people who count in corporate America (no matter how bad this is to say), Wall Street financiers.

Make of this what you will, but in my opinion, Adobe deciding not to be at MWNY is THEIR LOSS, not ours.

Ciao!

[ 06-23-2001: Message edited by: plaidpjs ]

[finboy]

Plaid, I kind of agree about the "creative" market thing, that reliance upon it has hurt Apple.

BUT I like the point that someone made about early adopters' need for speed and reliability.

That's me. I use 8.6 on the ibook because I don't want to risk that some of my apps won't work with 9.x. I have a Pismo with 9.0.4, and I'll migrate to that slowly over time.

But what will happen to hardware sales of the top-end stuff if there aren't any updates to OS X forthcoming. After all, every machine now ships with OS X preloaded. How many professionals (not even creatives, but folks like me) are going to put up with double boots and the other hassles of running a "Classic" environment with a machine that was designed to run a different OS? That's the key to this -- how will X impact hardware sales in the short run.

AND I can guarantee consumers won't appreciate X worth a damn, either, since it does NOTHING for them right now. For the average iMac buyer, is there any tangible benefit to owning a machine that shipped with X? No, but it lets SJ brag about the number of units of X that have shipped. Consumers will wonder why they have to pay for 2 OSs when they only use one of them.

[ 06-23-2001: Message edited by: finboy ]

[plaidpjs]

Originally posted by finboy:
<STRONG>Plaid, I kind of agree about the "creative" market thing, that reliance upon it has hurt Apple.

BUT I like the point that someone made about early adopters' need for speed and reliability.

That's me. I use 8.6 on the ibook because I don't want to risk that some of my apps won't work with 9.x. I have a Pismo with 9.0.4, and I'll migrate to that slowly over time.

But what will happen to hardware sales of the top-end stuff if there aren't any updates to OS X forthcoming. After all, every machine now ships with OS X preloaded. How many professionals (not even creatives, but folks like me) are going to put up with double boots and the other hassles of running a "Classic" environment with a machine that was designed to run a different OS? That's the key to this -- how will X impact hardware sales in the short run.

AND I can guarantee consumers won't appreciate X worth a damn, either, since it does NOTHING for them right now. For the average iMac buyer, is there any tangible benefit to owning a machine that shipped with X? No, but it lets SJ brag about the number of units of X that have shipped. Consumers will wonder why they have to pay for 2 OSs when they only use one of them.

[ 06-23-2001: Message edited by: finboy ]</STRONG>

Finboy,

I actually made a mistake and hit submit before I was done writing. So, you didn't get to read everything I wrote, i hope you'll give it another look. However, I do have to disagree with you about hardware sales and about the perception of consumers. I don't think that dual booting will cause a problem for many people. We've seen this done before, it was pretty much the standard practice when Windows 3.1 came out and again when 95 was first released.

Also, OS X holds a number of CURRENT benefits for consumers and professional users. What I think you were getting at is the software issue, and if that is so, I would venture to say that that is almost a misconception at this point. There are a number of very functional, very powerful programs out for OS X already, to do everything from database creation to vector artwork, to accounting, to programming, to web browsing. The problem is, they may not necessarily be the "name brand" software people are accustomed to using.

Now, this is not to say i don't agree with you about the hassles of double booting, but, i as a professional and a creative, have found ways to avoid needing to boot down to 9.x. And, until other applications become availabel I will continue to find ways not to have to go down to 9.x. Eventually, I will never have to work in that OS again. And, I love OS 9.x, I just love OS X more.

Ciao!

[ 06-23-2001: Message edited by: plaidpjs ]

[Ken_F2]

Adobe's Reasons for Not Attending MWNY Are Flat Out Lies - accoprding to the PR Director Adobe will not be attending MWNY because of "economic" reasons. The rest of the comments made by the PR Director would lead one to believe that Adobe does not have the money to support a presence (booth) at the event. This, however, is completely contradictory to all of their primping over their Q1 and Q2 earnings reports that put them way ahead of the rest of the computer market.

Yeah...but why is this? It has in good part to do with the massive cost-cutting efforts of Adobe management over the past twelve months.

MWNY is All About OS X - an earlier poster mentioned that it appears that if Adobe doesn't have any OS X stuff to show it appears they don't want to come at all. Well, truth be told, Adobe DOES have OS X product. They demoed InDesign on OS X at Seybold. I have heard from others that they have seen a beta version of PhotoShop and Illustrator running native OS X. Adobe has OS X product, and they have news regarding upcoming releases that they could share.

Well, let us not be naive. Customers don't just want to see Photoshop and Adobe's applications running native on OS X. They want to see Photoshop and the other applications running fast on OS X.. They want Photoshop 6.5 on OS X to be at least as fast as 6.0 on OS9, if not faster; performance is absolutely critical for this type of application. What impression would it give if Adobe were to demonstrate 6.5 on OSX 10.0.4, and everyone in attendence thought it was slow [more due to limitations with the current release of OS X]?

I know of several prominent, nearly-all-Mac design firms in NY whose management will not permit OS X to be installed on any systems. I suspect this is common all across the DTP and design industry. The employees at these firms may think OS X is beautiful, but they are not familiar with the performance issues that exist with current release of the platform. However, these same graphics and design customers have expectations for performance--they use PS day in and day out, and know how fast operations perform under OS9. If they see anything less than this performance at MW (regardless of whether it's the fault of Apple or Adobe), they will be sorely disappointed. Purchase and adoption decisions (both OSX and PS) would be made by some design customers based on such demos.

That given, I would not be surprised if it was Apple itself that had discouraged Adobe's attendence. The demonstration of Apple's core application assets--Photoshop, etc--running slowly on OSX could cause irreparable harm to the design industry's faith in the future of the Apple platform for their needs. Such would signal the beginning of the end for Apple.

Apple Needs Adobe - I'm sorry, but this is pure poppycock. What all the "creatives" seem to forget, is that just catering to a "creative" market was killing the company. Just catering to the "creative" market has gotten Apple a whopping 5% (and declining) market share.

I think you are dead-wrong here; your argument makes no sense. Yes, catering to the creative and Internet-appliance market has gotten Apple about 3.8% of the market. Do you seriously believe Apple should abandon design customers, thereby reducing their market share to 1% or 1.5%? Apple cannot afford to lose any significant customers. Period. Apple's publishing and design customers are said to be responsible for anywhere from 20% to 35% of Apple's new hardware sales. That is a lot to revenue to lose. For the moment at least, they cannot survive without this revenue.

Ken

[finboy]

Originally posted by plaidpjs:
<STRONG>


Also, OS X holds a number of CURRENT benefits for consumers and professional users.

</STRONG>

Please enumerate the CURRENT benefits for consumers. Not powerusers, but iMac-buying, minivan-driving consumers. And not the EVENTUAL benefits, they don't count if Apple loses on this big thrust into the consumer market.

In particular, point out which of these are large enough to get them to desert their current software, learn a new OS and the features therein, and buy new peripherals which are supported by the new OS (all of the switching costs). You're right -- as a professional it makes sense for you to take a few hours to learn something, and then you practice it every day. What about those who turn the computer on two or three times per week?

I'm not being a hard-a** on this, P, but I really don't see consumers switching unless their machine comes with it. And I'd be willing to bet that many will change their minds once they learn that new machines ship with OS X, either delaying the decision to ramp up their hardware and/or going to a different solution. Thank goodness that WinME and Win2K are such pits of despair, or the OS 9 fiasco would have really hurt Apple last year (2000). There were LOTS of discouraged folks after that one.

[ 06-23-2001: Message edited by: finboy ]

[WDL]

Plaid:

You said:

"For all its shortcomings, and all the whining and complaining from Apple "traditionalists",
OS X is doing something that every other Mac OS couldn't, it's attracting NEW users
to the Mac platform."

Where's the proof of that - and how many? Specifics please.

Finboy:

Another feature that's not going to please - 64 megs of RAM on Macs shipping with OS X.

We (the loyalists) have learned to accept Macs shipping with minimal RAM compared
to parallel featured PCs - (even minimal expansion ports etc.) but even for us, this is a
souring note. With RAM so cheap, why in heaven's name would Apple ensure they
continue to annoy the sh-one-t out of customers by being so obtuse!

It's become a standard that when we buy a Mac, we just know up front we're going to
have to spend money to get what are normal features elsewhere.

I'm running four Macs and the initial purchase price of each was not accurate in view
of the features I had to add at considerable expense.

I still believe Adobe is taking a "wait-watch-and see" position on OS X before they make
a decision on a massive commitment to develop all their programs for X.

WDL

[plaidpjs]

Okay... defense time:

Ken_F2 - First, we can sit here and argue all day about design houses and DTPs choosing or not choosing to upgrade their systems to OS X. We could also just as likely argue all day about the reasons they are making those decisions. I will, gladly say, that in terms of large scale design firms/advertising firms, your perspective is probably dead on. my comments were more toward independents, of which i am one and know a lot of. A good portion of those I know WANT to be working in OS X exclusively.

Second, everyone is making the assumption that if PhotoShop or Illustrator were proted over to OS X, they would run slowly and less efficiently. i just don't see that as the case. Most people interpret PhotoShops memory demands in OS 9.x as translating over to OS X, from everything I know of the way OS X functions and the way the programs use memory, this is just a fallacy. And, to speed, I really don't seeing this being as great a concern as you are making it out to be, I mean, there were noticeable speed declines in the functioning of PS between OS 8 and OS 9 and with the release of PS 6 things did not get any "adrenaline" boost in performance. not to mention the fact that, fi we want to look at correlaries, at least in those instance where PS does seriously bog down on OS 9 in OS X you'd at least be able to do something else. I understand the desire for speed, but I just don't see it being an issue with a carbon version of PhotoShop or Illustrator, I don't think they'd take a hit like everyone is making out.

Third, MARKET SHARE! that's the name of the game, give up market share and you give up revenue. Well, let's look at the truth of the matter: Has Apple been catering specifically to the "creative" market? Yes. Has this increased Apple's market share? No. Did it generate at least marginal profits for Apple? No. Has catering to the "creative" market protected Apple from incursion in that market by Windows and PCs? No, while "creatives" have not given up their macs, no major firms, or even local print shops have gone without the adoption of a few PCs. (Hell, when I was working in San Diego my print shop of choice added almost as many PCs into service as they had Macs already running.)

So, what did generate profits for Apple? Switching focus to a more mainstream consumer market with the introduction of the iMac and the iBook. Even with the introduction of these computers, did Apple grow market share? Not really. Why? Because Apple was still largely a closed system and percieved as a "creatives" computer, not a power users. Because Apple's OS was perceived as inferior from a performance standard. Because computers have been moving ever more into a networked idiom and Apple's OS just wasn't really fitting in well with the others. Which is also why it was never largely adopted by corporate America, they were sold and stuffed on PCs and couldn't really integrate a Mac if they wanted to (not to say it couldn't be done, but they didn't see it as a viable option).

Now, while I understand the need to preserve a user base, I also know that you need to grow your user base. Given that the "creative" market is not the exclusive territory of Apple, and given the limited perception of Apple computers as only for "creatives", what is Apple to do? The only sensible thing is to schuff as much of the "creatives" only aura of their computers and OS, while at the same time expanding the capabilities and functionality of their computers and OS. Inevitably, that means that they no longer strictly cater to the "creative" market. And what does that leave us, Mac OS X.

Is Mac OS X a bad product? Overall, no. Does Mac OS X expand the perception of Apple computers? Hell yes, show it to any PC user, show it to a *nix head, and watch their expressions change. Does Mac OS X expand the capabilities and functionality of Apple's previous OSes? Another resounding HELL YES! Preemptive multitasking, protected memory, true multi-user support, enhanced networking capabilities, and the ability to run a whole suite of industry leading, cutting edge Internet and Networking applications that were previously never even considered operable on a Mac system. Does Mac OS X devalue the "creative" market influence of the previous Mac OSes? Maybe, but I'm leaning toward no. I mean, seriously, while it isn't perfect (I will freely admit that), OS X does still have Color Sync capabilities builtin, it does have built-in font support, and it uses PDF as the foundation for its primary graphics layer.

This is the step Apple needed to take. It opens their systems up to a much larger community of computer users. It puts Apple back into the mix as a viable alternative to a PC, not only within corporate America, but also within every household on the block, especially where that 13 year old programmer/hacker is tinkering away on the next best idea to ever come along. And, most importantly, it's still not Windows! And, for whatever cracks people want to make about it's candy-colored widgets, it still looks better than Windows.

I don't know, I could be very, very wrong with all this... but, I did have a great experience this past weekend that leads me to believe what i'm saying is more on point than not. On my trip to Los Angeles, I was seated in first class amidst six executives from a prominent Fortune 500 company. When I pulled out my PowerBook G3/400, none of them thought anything of it. When i turned it on and booted up OS X, however, it was another story entirely. I, literally speaking, had them hanging over the back of my seat while I put it through its tasks, I opened up a Terminal session, finished an install of PHP, MySQL, and Apache 1.3.19 I had begun the day before (all from source), then opened BBEdit to write a very quick PHP page, started Apache from the System Preferences panel, di a quick open -e to check my hosts file and make sure the loopback address was good, then lit off IE and OW to test the installations. I spent the next 2 hours answering questions and passing my PB around for everyone to play with.

Hell, I haven't had as much fun on an airplane since I joined the mile high club. Of course, the best part was watching the IT guy very unobtrusively slide his Dell back into it's bag while he eagerly took my PB from his compatriot and started smiling like a giddy school boy... hehe, I only wish I had had a TiBook with me.

Ciao!

[plaidpjs]

Finboy - Forgive me for not responding to your post directly, but rather directing you to the long post i just made in response to Ken_F2... some of what iwas talking about is in that rant. i will post more later if necessary.

WDL - I have now visited both of the currently open Apple stores, and on each occassion i have seen PC users walk in skeptical and walk out with a new Apple computer (both times after Apple switched to preinstalling OS X and all the machines in the stores were running OS X), in each instance it has been the OS that has sealed the deal, whether its simplicity in the case of older consumers, or its power and capabilities with the younger ones. But, of course, i don't have hard numbers, but it is something I've witnessed on more than one occassion and that i have read about on a dozen more. For a personal recount of this please refer to my above mentioned post.

Also, there are only 3 production machines left that only ship with 64MBs of RAM (the base model Icebook, the iMac 400, and the iMac 500). Two of these will more than likely cease to be in production by MWNY and will, if the rumors bear out, be replaced by new machines. Everything else ships with a min of 128MBs of RAM, which will more than likely be standard on all new configurations. So, I don't think the RAM rant you made makes much sense. Especially considering that eMachines, Dell, and Compaq still sell machines that only come equipped with 32MBs of RAM. Also, you can't really cross compare Apple products with many, if any, PCs. There are just to many thing s that are standard on EVERY mac that are only now, or have even just recently, made it into the PC world as standard features (i.e. USB ports, Firewire, DVD, etc.).


Ciao!