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Need To Lie Down For A Sec (1/13/04)
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Say, what's the matter? A world in which analysts upgrade Apple and the company's stock keeps rising isn't alien enough for you? Well, then maybe you'd like to go with the total disorientation package and throw in a pinch of "Apple is a good choice for big business" and a dash or two of "Apple is cheaper than its Wintel-based competition." Are you game? Then buckle up, Chim-Chim, because ComputerWorld (of all sources) has just the media surrealism you're looking for.
Seriously, how goofy is this? At first you figure ComputerWorld's Mark Hall is setting Apple up for a hatchet job, because he declares that designing "a server with two 2-GHz G5 processors, 1 GB of memory, storage capacity of 80 to 750 GB and loads of other goodies all in a slim 1U package" doesn't qualify as "stunning." (Personally, we beg to differ; just glancing at a picture of the Xserve G5 requires that we then sit down, put our heads between our knees, and breathe into a paper bag for ten minutes.) Then comes the kicker: "what's stunning is that Apple's marketers will price the Xserve system at $3999"-- and he's got sticker shock in a good way. A $3999 price tag, notes Hall, makes Apple "the price leader for dual-CPU servers by a couple of bucks." Sounds good, right?
But then Hall conscientiously adds in the biggest up-front hidden cost of running a Windows server that Microsoft would like the press to forget: whereas the Xserve ships with Mac OS X Server and an unlimited client license at no extra charge, "a 25-user enterprise license for Windows adds $2,495 to the price of a dual-processor PowerEdge 1750 server from Dell." Suddenly that "couple of bucks" you saved by getting an Xserve just grew by over three orders of magnitude versus what you'd have spent on a Wintel server-- and that's assuming you have fewer than 25 users. That's why Jon Moog of RiskWise LLC (a company which "runs credit checks for large financial institutions") has more than 250 Xserves running in his racks. "Dollar for dollar, the systems are cheaper than Windows machines," and he plans to upgrade to the new G5 models "without a doubt."
Wow... ComputerWorld touting Apple as the cheapest option. A company in the business of supporting large financial institutions running Apple servers. And to top it all off, the use of the phrase "Apple's slavish support of industry standards"-- words that, had we encountered them as little as three or four years ago, would probably have broken our brains beyond all repair.
...Where'd we put that paper bag?...
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SceneLink (4441)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 1/13/04 episode: January 13, 2004: Cancel the red alert; according to HP, the iPod isn't getting WMA support anytime soon and the Windows SuperSite guy is just on drugs or something. Meanwhile, Apple's stock continues to rise (thanks to a couple of analyst upgrades), and ComputerWorld points out that Apple makes the cheapest dual-processor servers on the market-- by a huge margin, if you count the cost of Windows...
Other scenes from that episode: 4439: WMA iPods: "Never Mind" (1/13/04) You've surely heard by now, but just in case you haven't and you're still foaming at the mouth over Microsoft shill Paul Thurrott's claim that Hewlett-Packard had succeeded in pushing Apple into supporting Redmond's "superior" (cough) Windows Media Audio (WMA) format in upcoming iPods, it's time to give those salivary glands a break... 4440: AAPL: Gravity, Shmavity (1/13/04) So Apple's stock is still doing happy things, much to the surprise of veteran Apple-watchers everywhere; despite the overall market closing down today, AAPL was up another 39 cents, and earlier in the day it actually came within 17 cents of its 52-week high-- a week after an Expo Stevenote, mind you, which is traditionally a time when the market doesn't "get" the new announcements and drives the price down...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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