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Apple's Focus is Still Software
bonch writes "Via a Forbes interview, Steve Jobs reassures Apple faithful that despite the runaway success of products like the iPod they are still a committed software company. He also talks about the real motivations behind negotiating Microsoft's 1997 $150 million investment in Apple, the development that went into the original iTunes (only four months!), their future expected revenues, and much more. MacObserver provides an overview, and Fortune has excerpts here."
I watched Steve's kenyote speech, and he spent fiteen times as much time demo'ing software than talking about the Mac mini -- which I thought was the big event of the night. Some totally noncharismatic VP demo'ed Pages for ages, a band was called to demo GarageBand, and Steve generally spent a lot of time clicking around.
I ended up thinking "wow, Apple is really a software company that happens to make hardware".
Jobs was "buying time" with the Microsoft deal and the original iMac to maintain interest in Apple and its perceived viability while software engineers furiously worked to bring Mac OS X to market, which Jobs saw as Apple's biggest bet on the future.
I am personally glad they made the bet. OS X is what brought me back to Mac after over 10 years. I know some older Mac enthusiasts who swear by the older OS's, but those OS's were losing ground. I had to use PC's for the lack of software. They were great if you did graphical layout or things like that. The problem for me was the unavailability of Matlab. I simply had to be able to use Matlab. I needed the fastest way to do that and throughout the 90's that meant using a PC. Once OS X came in, Apple courted The Mathworks to port it to OS X. From my memory, The Mathworks said no, so Apple did the port themselves using X11. Once I saw that Matlab worked on Macs with OS X via X11--and it was both stable and fast, I immediately began shopping for a Mac....and have never regretted that decision.
Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
Because Apple has nothing to prove to you.
Jobs is right when he says Apple is a software company, you just don't understand what he means by that. A Mac is nothing without OS X. An iPod is nothing without iTunes. Cameras are nothing without iLife. Software is the center, the key to the success of everything else.
But quite smartly, Apple makes money off both. Now why would Apple give up billions of dollars just so they can win a bet you seem to have with them?
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I have yet to figure out why they havent botherd to make an OS to run on x86 based systems rather then there mostly proprietary hardware
Heh, x86 is proprietary and closed. Intel reverse engineered it. AMD reverse engineered it. Transmeta has an implementation. Contrast this with the PowerPC platform. IBM wrote most of the specs. It is completely open and documented. IBM and Motorola sell large numbers of systems and their is no barrier for any other company to enter.
In Bizarro world "closed but popular" means "open" and "open, but not as popular" means "proprietary."
If apple botherd to try and spread out into the larger PC market they would slaughter MS rather quick and I woudlent mind seeing it happen. Apples software is limited mostly to apple branded hardware and that limits how well the company can compete.
Yeah because so many companies have done well competing with a company convicted of abusing their monopoly to stifle competition. That is why OS2 and BeOS are so popular. It is especially a good idea to destroy 95% of your income by entering into an overpopulated commodity market where all but one player is losing money at the same time as trying to compete with said monopoly. Brilliant!
I think you hit the nail on the head. I am seeing a lot of slashdot articles and discussion about "Oh my god, look how small it is! People will line up to buy this!", but for a windows user my entire life like myself my thought was "I've heard so much about OSX I'd like to give it a whirl, now I can finally afford a machine to run it." OSX is by no means perfect, there are some annoyances, but I am so much happier with my new mac mini than my windows box. So much so that I haven't booted my windows box since the day I got my mini.
And to anyone else in my same position who hasn't even tried OSX, the learning curve is surprisingly small. I recommend David Pogue's OSX: The Missing Manual Book which helped translate windows fuctionality to the mac equivalants. Also check out The Top 100 OSX Applications, it has helped me determine what the mac equivalant of my favorite windows software is.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
...PC user's will have *choice*... they could even have Windows+OS X on the same desktop. And it is *choice* where Apple will dismantle the Microsoft monopoly.
OS X is _NOT_ a monolithic OS, like Windows. Once Apple have OS X prepped and prepared on its modular foundations (no its not all there yet), Jobs will be able to rev OSX thrice for each new release of Windows. In a sideXside environment, OS X is going to look more modern, capable and powerful than Microsoft's aging sibling in the adjoining *window*... developer's will have a choice, user's will have a choice and Microsoft will have no choice... does anybody get it?