Apple's Colossal Disappointment?

Mudzy writes "Michael Roberson, founder of Linspire, has an article at The TechZone talking about Apple's 'Colossal Disappointment' for not porting Mac OS X to PC after they announced the move to Intel processors. He discuss why this could be a mistake." From the article: "Instead of a brilliant strategic maneuver, it's a step necessitated by IBM's inability to keep pace with Intel. It seems Apple was tired of losing the gigahertz competition to the PC world. Apple had been promising faster computers for some time and had not been able to deliver them. In addition, they were frustrated at IBM's inability to produce a fast low-powered chip for laptops."

Comments

Apple isn't stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the heck would they? If they did they most certainly would no longer be a hardware company.

Re:Apple isn't stupid

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

At some point, being both a hardware and a software company is going to be about as smart as trying to be both a heavy-weapons manufacturer and a hamburger restaurant.

Actually a more apt comparison would be a weapons manufacturer and a munition manufacturer. It actually makes sense, as they have one product tailor-made to compliment the other. I don't see why Apple should have to make a choice here, I think their "one-stop shop" approach to computing makes a lot of sense in today's world of shite PCs running a shite OS...

Re:Apple isn't stupid

[peawee03]

if they could produce enough stable drivers to support a wide range of hardware

That's the problem right there. One of the issues that I understand Apple has much less of is the fact that there's only a limited number of hardware and software combinations, and Apple knows how the OS will interact with the hardware, because it knows all the details on both.

Quite possibly, Apple's defination of "stable drivers" is quite more strict than yours (and mine as well), so that "It just works" is a reality, and to really protect hardware stability, they need to control the hardware platform so that the software behaves as expected.

Then again, they could just be control freaks for the sake of being control freaks.

Re:Apple isn't stupid

[huckleup]

They are exceptionnal engineers and very lousy businessman

And exactly how many companies that were making desktop computers in the '70s are still around today, have tens of millions of paying customers, and billions in the bank?

Get a clue. Don't measure everything against what a company like M$ did, much of which has since been determined to be illegal. Apple's business sense has been just fine. The company has weathered many storms precisely because they had financial buffers that the businessmen put in place as the technology landscape unfolded. No one knew exactly how it was all going to turn out, and most crashed and burned along the way. You should wish that you were so 'lousy' at succeeding in any business, let alone the cut throat computer business.

Re:Apple isn't stupid

[coolgeek]

How many 90+ hour/week engineers do you think they would have to lay off after losing the software development subsidy embedded in the cost of Macs? Truth is, we would not have OS X without Macs. OS X will not move forward without Macs, it's an economic impossibility. And as much of an open source fan I am, open sourcing Mac OS X would not cause it to evolve. Mutate, perhaps.

Re:Apple isn't stupid

[TinyManCan]

SW per se is a burden

Yeah, it has really been killing Microsoft's Bottom Line :)

Software is not a burden. Apple uses their software to sell their hardware. I wouldn't buy a computer if I had to code everything I wanted myself (i'd install Linux if I wanted that :) Just a joke, don't kill me).

I think that Apples future lies in their software. Really, people are in love with their Mac because of OS X, not because of the silicon and components that make up the hardware.

Apple is transitioning to a future where they can produce more higher quality hardware, and they are going to use OS X to sell the pants off of it.

People think that Apple (the stock) is over-valued. I think that the market has merely recognized that Apple is now in a position to increase its sales 25%+ Year over Year for more than a couple straight quarters.

Re:Apple isn't stupid

[xwizbt]

What utter bollocks. Apple's main mistake was getting rid of Steve Jobs' bizarrely hypnotic business presence. Nowadays, Apple's market share steadily increases. iPod halo effect... who cares. Either way, Apple seem to be on the up.

History-wise, Apple look a bit daft occasionally. Nowadays, they're on top...

Re:Apple isn't stupid

[ja2ke]

Considering Apple has stayed in business for the past 30 years as an innovator (versus leveraging off of someone elses hype and innovations) I don't think they're lousy businessmen at all.

They make profit, they drive the market (and open new markets & massively expand existing small ones - iPod, consumer video), and seem generally content with their size.

If by "where they should be" you mean "Apple should have 95% of the marketshare like Microsoft," then I think you should go back and re-think some details. Apple is in a pretty good place, and has been so for quite a few years at this point. To varying degrees, Apple has been doing pretty well since their first return to decent profitability with the 2nd generation G3 desktops, followed by the generally steady climb up starting with the iMac (dotcom bust notwithstanding) and going through to their current situation with the iPods, Mac mini's, and current iMacs. I don't think they're in a bad place.

Re:Apple isn't stupid

[piecewise]

Your critique of Apple's bread and butter couldn't be more wrong, but thanks for playing.

1. Apple has many breads and many butters: Macs and iPods. They are both strategically important to the company's continued success. Software sales are a big business, too, and that's important to them.

2. Macs aren't reserved for the "bowels of marketing or tech document department[s]." A good number of students use them, lots of movie stars, bankers, lawyers, doctors, stock brokers, artists, writers, teachers, politicians, programmers..... (a light should start flashing in your head.. That's your idea light.)

In fact, the Mac has continued to dramatically outpace PC market gain.

3. If Apple's opportunity were closing EVERY DAY, then how have they forged such a comeback? The truth is, there is no abstract definition of when a company gets hot and when it doesn't. Solid innovation with great marketing at an affordable price is a formula for success. Besides, if their window were closing every day, why has the Mac's market gains continued to SPEED UP? Wouldn't that mean the window continues to open?

4. I know what an "executive wannabee" is, I think, but I don't know what it has to do with Mac OS X.

5. Ah yes, a new Windows is on the horizon. Vista! Longhorn! All of 18 months away and short on features compared to OS X Tiger (and Leopard). The truth is, more and more consumers are moving to Mac OS X in droves because they're sick of Windows treating them like second class citizens in the OS world, they're sick of crap security and viruses, and they appreciate the incredible design that went into their iPod and iTunes music store.

6. No offense to my audience here.. but I don't think Linux is on any march to "critical desktop mass." Your argument seems to be that the Mac is doomed and that droves of people are lining up to buy Linux boxes and compile a window manager. Um... you might want to find your way back to earth. Find out if anything hit Discovery on your way back, if you like.

7. Apple, like them or not, is a cultural icon more than ever. They are one of the world's top brands - and that is something that will fuel growth for 10 years. Brands are a powerful thing.

Anyway, next time you want to go on a rant, back it up with some facts. Don't just make absurd comments.

Why?

[BWJones]

Bogus. What Michael (the author of the linked article) seems to think is that Apple made the switch for entirely reasons of CPU speed. The reality is much more complicated than that and encompasses reasons of yes, CPU speed, but also platform flexibility, heat, management of media rights and others. I covered some of these reasons here back on June 9th, but the future of media management is central to their strategy and was one of the driving forces behind the move. Additionally, Michael goes on to state that Macintosh users will "first have to suffer through a period of uncertainty and forced upgrades.". I also talked about this in my article, but to summarize, there really is no uncertainty about this process. It is going forward and most users will not notice or care about whether their Macintosh has an Intel or a PPC inside of it. They just want their computers to work as seamlessly as they have before and help them manage their lives and be more productive. Users will not have to be making any tough decisions as both platforms will be supported for years and years to come. Apple has proven this ability by maintaining parity between the PPC and Intel codebases already since the beginning of OS X and is showing the industry how to proceed when it comes to backwards and forwards compatibility.

Any other objection that Michael has to this switch has to do with OS X not being able to run on commodity PC hardware. Well, .......yeah. As we used to say when we were kids, "No Duh". Why would Apple want to get into the game of supporting literally millions of combinations of hardware compatibility issues and troubleshooting? Why? Where is the income from that going to come from? They already make available (and will continue to) make Darwin available for PPC and Intel, so if you want to swing that way, go for it.

Don't get me wrong. I really do appreciate what he has done with Linspire, but it is not OS X and I cannot imagine that Apple will simply hand over their technologies.

Re:Why?

[n0-0p]

Isn't this the same guy who was trying to argue that there is no vulnerability in running as root all the time? Honestly, his reality distortion talent could give Jobs a run for his money.

Re:Why?

[WalterSobchak]

I fully agree, particularly on two points:

- The switch will be painless
Creating Fat Binaries is easy and quick for those using Xcode. Been there, done that already. And as Motorola is no longer supporting CodeWarrior, everybody not using Xcode woulld have had to make the jump sooner or later

- Apple has no interest in having the OS running on other hardware. They are a hardware company, this is how they run their business.

Just my 0.02

Alex

Re:Why?

[javaxman]

how many of those are going to be able or willing to "just do a recompile" - and not link it (the recompile) with versions, features, or new licensing opportunities. The chances that all of those vendors are going to just cooperate and make everybody's lives simpler are pretty low.

Woah, there's a load of difference between developers supporting a platform and developers releasing a bunch of new binaries to existing customers without charge. Sure, Apple developers are going to recompile their apps, and some of them are going to take advantage of the opportunity to add a few features and make your Intel-native version a paid upgrade. Users who find the overhead incurred by Rosetta are going to come up with the extra cash ( or pirate the native version while cursing the developer, or find a cheaper competing product ).

Either way, few, if any, current OS X developers are going to look at the Intel transition and say "this is way too hard to do with my existing code base, I don't see opportunity here, I'm going to go code for ( Windows/Linux/Solaris/BeOS/SCOUnix/etc ) instead."... That's all that matters for Apple in the long term. In the short term, it's a little annoying for users, and it's an opportunity for enterprising developers to snatch business from competing products by offering better product or cheaper prices to users faced with a paid upgrade, and/or gain user loyalty by providing free Intel Native updates, like some are already doing.

NeXT had OpenStep which was originally going to be pushed forward with OS X, as "Yellow Box" - theoretically, a set of runtime DLLs could have been installed on a Windows box, and the same code could run on either platform. (I don't remember if it was a common binary, fat binary, or recompile).

OpenStep is a specification. GNUStep is an implementation of that specification, which works on Intel now- even Windows if you're willing to use Cygwin or MingW and don't mind an app that doesn't look like a windows app. I never got into OpenStep Toolkit for Windows development ( I *think* that was the implementation ), but if there are DLLs involved, they're probably for windowing and other such similar basic functionality that would be used by any app? The app itself would be a binary, 'fat' only if compiled for multiple platforms of course. If you were careful enough not to use Apple-only features, you could do the same thing with GNUStep today.

Certainly code written in Carbon is going to have no common technology with NeXT. Maybe apps written with Cocoa code take advantage of what used to be Yellow Box.

Other than Altivec code ( which, espeically if older, will almost always need a complete rewrite), Carbon code is going to be the toughest to port to Intel, from what I understand. I'm not talking about single-line carbon library calls, those are probably no problem, I'm talking about Carbon windows, controls, and real serious amounts of legacy stuff. On the other hand, if Microsoft can move Office, everyone else can get going and start moving that Carbon code to Cocoa. It's not hard. Hire me to do it for you. Really. What are you waiting for... I don't waste THAT much time posting to /., I swear...

Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing fewer apps with weird Carbon behavior that mistakenly claim the computer is out of memory and don't know the right path name. They're actually pretty rare already, and I'm not going to miss them.

Windows vs. Mac increasingly less relevant

[Ohmster]

Not sure I understand this, and it seems to be a relatively old story (last month already)...it seems to be more Michael Robertson's disappointment rather than Apple, with a tinge of sour grapes in the air. Anyway, the world is rapidly changing to make the whole Windows vs. Mac box competition to be relatively less interesting. With more applications and services moving off the desktop and into the network, the battleground is increasingly shifting online. Apple has already leveraged this move by becoming the number four vendor of personal computers, right behind Gateway on the recent numbers. Now they just need to start to race Microsoft to making more of their applications web-optimized and OS-agnostic. iTunes is a basic step in that direction. The portals are not standing still though...Yahoo!'s acquisition of Konfabulator is in my view a move toward making this new reality happen faster. More on that here: http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/07/on_yahoo_acquis.htm l

Apple sells _computers_, not just software

[CdXiminez]

Apple is in the business of selling computers, not OSses. They're not going to support computers they didn't make themselves.

Excuse Me

[dnaumov]

But who the hell is Michael Roberson, founder of Linspire to tell Apple's Steve Jobs how to run a successful computer company? Linspire has how much revenue/profit and how many users?

Re:Excuse Me

[angle_slam]

By that standard, the only opinion that really matters is that of Bill Gates, the richest man in the world.

Ohh how quickly we forget

[Aqua OS X]

Ohh how quickly we forget about Power Computing, Power Max, Windows, and why this a bad idea.

Re:Ohh how quickly we forget

[bigpat]

"Ohh how quickly we forget about Power Computing, Power Max, Windows, and why this a bad idea."

Bad idea for Apple, in the short term at least. Since it would cut deaply and immediately into Hardware sales as it did with the Mac clones (I bought a clone, but would I have bought an Apple?).

Keep in mind that being an OS company has worked pretty well for Microsoft as a business model, but they weren't trying to sell their own hardware except as accessories for the software (ie the MS mouse) I think in the long term that Apple could get out of the hardware business altogether and sell the OS only. Or alternately split the hardware and software businesses as was envisioned with the clones.

Though, I agree why mess with a good thing, but the clone strategy was in response to slipping market share, not the cause of it. Ultimately, I think the clones helped maintain mindshare and helped Apple reinvent itself.

Another counter example, Sun now has a x86 version of Solaris that works on non Sun hardware. But that makes sense simply because it means that unix admins and college students can hone their Solaris skills on commodity hardware which helps support their core server business.

Overall, I'd just be a little less quick to judge the lessons learned from the Apple clone experience. After all, it was a short lived business model and the Mac OS wasn't nearly as good a product as it is now.

Apple will do what's best for them - not us

[Dark Paladin]

After reading through the article, I'm not sure that I was convinced that it was in Apple's best interests to allow clones.

Look at it from Apple's point of view, the things he points out as negatives work more like positives:

1. Forced upgrades. Apple has announced "dual binary" support for their applications for an unspecified length of time, but either way the company has to be salivating at how many people will be buying new machines in 10 more months. And as recent reports show, they're selling more machine now than ever, so it would appear that the "halo effect" is greater than the "Osborne effect".

2. If Apple sales continue to do well after the final shift to Intel, then Apple can keep on their plans: make money off of computer and iPod sales (and whatever other new devices they come up with). Right now, they have a good line of movie editing software which only works on their software set (and they control the hardware to run it), they are developing other business tools (Pages and the like). So as long as people keep buying their machines and their market share is growing with the company making good profits, why change?

3. If, in some future, Apple decides to do cloning, it is in their best interest to do it later than sooner. My reasoning? They can use the next 10-36 months to iron out all of the issues dealing with the Intel transfer, see how the market reacts, how things like an "OS X WINE" works out, and so on. Then, with this expertise, they will be in a perfect position to dictate to cloners how things will work so the "Mac Experience" will be maintained, rather than just throwing the OS to the winds and hoping for the best.

Would I like it if Apple just let OS X free? Sure - but that's not in Apple's best interest. So, as long as they show a steady rise in profit and sales, I don't see them changing their minds any time soon. They seem to be doing what works, which probably makes them and their investors happy.

Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Control of Hardware

[Omega1045]

I am sure this is dead obvious to many here, but I am going to make the point anyway. Control of hardware makes a Mac as stable as it is. Look at the stability of Win95 v. Win98 v. Win2k. MS create more and more stringent rules on the "quality" of drivers for hardware. One of the reasons that Win2k does not have as many blue screens as 98 or NT4 is that 3rd party drivers are not f@cking up everything as much, since they must pass tougher tests to be certified.

Now imagine how much control Apple has, knowing exactly what hardware their OS will be running on. They can do any number of things to optimize their OS and software to the hardware, and still keep their high level of stability.

Porting OSX out to everything would have also gotten rid of the sexy mac machines vs. the ugly beige PCs. And I am sure the MBAs out there will tell me that there are all kinds of money reasons that Apple wants to control their own hardware.

From the Linspire founder perspective

[saha]

You have to take this op/ed with a huge grain of salt. Its like Rob Glaser complaining about iTunes and the iTMS not opening their Fairplay DRM. Linspire may be worried about the long term impact on their own company when Apple starts to sell Intel based Macs which with virtualization could run Windows, Linux, BSD...any x86 compatible OS thanks to Vanderpool.

This quote from him "I would love to see Apple's PC market share reverse its downward trend". Is pure FUD being sown by the Linspire folks. I think Linspire should focus on competing with the other Linux distros out there. For the last six months report after report has been showing Apple increasing their sales. i.e. PC units sold (+35% from the same quarter last year) and profitability primarily due to the iPod.

robertson is a dumbfuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's reason for switching to intel has nothing to do with more megahertz, better heat dissapation, DRM issues or any of the other crap that people have been spouting.

It comes down to one thing, they want to take on microsoft for control of the desktop. The way they are doing it is brilliant. They will switch to Intel based hardware made by Apple for the first year or so. They will then announce a deal with the HP and/or Dell allowing them to sell OSX with their hardware. After a year or so of that they will open up the floodgates and sell OSX to anyone and everyone.

What this means is that in 2 or 3 years time microsoft will have some real competition on the desktop (maybe even sooner, who knows). This also means the end of the line for linux on the desktop (linspire especially).

The reason they are implementing in these stages is simple - to keep attention on themselves. Apple will be in the news constantly the next 2 or 3 years, their stock price will continue to rise with all this attention, especially when wall street sees that each subsequent step apple takes leads to more more profit. Brilliant.

-ec

IBM's lack of motivation, not their inability

[rdean400]

It was the Apple/IBM alliance's inability to agree on a mutually profitable path that would allow Apple to keep up. The PPC 970, based on POWER4, is a generation behind IBM's POWER5. IBM *can* put together a roadmap that will keep the PowerPC competitive with Intel. The question is whether Apple would buy enough of them to allow IBM to leverage economies of scale.

*yawn*

[colmore]

Why do people keep thinking Apple is a software company. Just because you want OS X on your PC doesn't mean it's a good idea for them to port it. A lot of what makes Apple Apple is the fact that they operate on a small range of rigorously controlled hardware.

There will *never* be a general PC release for OS X, their profit margin is just too good on their own hardware, why would they want to spawn a bunch of cheap competitors?

He seems to be missing the point

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The point of having a Mac with OSX, for Apple, is that they have *one*, very well defined platform to support, therefore they can concentrate on supporting it well. I don't own a Mac (well, a Mac 128 in my collection :-) but I understand that's how they define their business.

Now if they ported OSX so it could run on every PC, that means supporting a billion devices, or letting a billion drivers do who-knows-what and it would be a mess, just like Linux and Windows are (yes, I'm a Linux fan, don't give me shit I'm just being realistic here...)

I can't believe this made slashdot

[iopossum]

Some guy writes "Man Apple made a mistake and should have made their OS generic to PCs" and we treat it like its a new proposition. Welcome to 1990.

Re:old news, but interesting facts

[Cro Magnon]

I interpreted it as "I'm very disappointed that OSX won't run on commodity hardware! But, Linspire does, so all you cheap PC users, buy Linspire right now!!!". Of course, Linspire doesn't WANT OSX on generic hardware. But, they won't mind mentioning it if it DOESN'T.

Blaming IBM's capabilities misses the point

[Ho Kooshy Fly]

Look IBM has world class fabs for SoC's, can do low power, high performance computing and have major mind share in the ASIC world. Their high volume/high profit market is not what Apple is selling. They did the PowerPC 970 for Apple and d they are the highest volume runner, which for IBM is the proverbial drop in the bucket. It adds more visibility but not revenue.

If Apple delivered more product or *gasp* payed IBM to develop low power processors for the laptop market, they couldn't complain. Should Apple have paid IBM for development when getting it from AMD/Intel in the x86 world would be free? No, but people should believe that it was because their vendor was incapable. It was just the Apple itself isn't significant enough to justify chip development with low payoff for IBM.

-Ho

why would apple run on dells and white boxes?

[swschrad]

to quote somebody who once had a one-shot success, "that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard of."

you think apple wants to enter the creaky world of "mad dog" peripherals and dock sweepings network cards, PCs with pushed speeds, and all sorts of marginal parts from mysterious outfits that come and go in the night? why in hell would anybody wish that support hell on them?

you control your hardware environment, you control the number of crash-and-burn intersices between hardware misbehaviors.

Look how well that worked before: Palm + OPENSTEP

[mbkennel]

Let's see how well that worked before for anybody except Microsoft.

Palm spins off PalmOS and licenses OS here and their hardware. Result: Palm corp gets nearly destroyed, Handspring merges back, and Windows Pocket takes off.

And then there's the fact that Steve Jobs tried exactly the same thing before, with nearly the same operating system back when it was grey instead of lickable: OPENSTEP.

How well were they able to keep up with drivers for modern hardware? Very poorly.

How well were they able to convince major PC makers to include OPENSTEP as pre-built option, at a competitive price? Not one bit.

Did this make NeXT Inc, stronger or weaker compared to when NeXT made hardware? Much weaker.

Jobs had a near-death experience doing exactly this strategy.

There's also the fact that this puts them in direct competition with Microsoft, attempting to copy Microsoft's business model, and competing with Microsoft for clients.

How well has this worked for IBM {OS/2}? Not very well at all.

How well does this work for Linux, which is even free and has zillions of people trying to write drivers? Only marginally, after 10 years. You can't easily click a button and get a Linux based Dell (especially a laptop) with everything pre-loaded, supported, and with all features working. After 10 years.

Profoundly Ignorant

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple cannot compete with Microsoft on its own turf. Pure and simple.

1. OS X has been available for PCs before: when it was called NeXTSTEP 3.x and 4.x. Here's what NeXT, er, Apple, learned. When you are a secondary operating system on Intel, you have to write your own drivers. Microsoft does not: hardware manufacturers must write drivers for them. Even with all the companies involved in supporting Linux (notably IBM), its breadth drivers are astonishingly limited by Apple's standards. This is not a small problem. By restricting the machines on which OS X will run, Apple dramatically simplifies the driver issue.

2. Microsoft holds a dagger of Damocles over Apple's head. If Apple makes their OS available on Intel, Microsoft can simply pull Office for X. Apple is highly dependent on Office, and StarOffice is not an option. Part of the reason for Keynote, I suspect is for Apple to slowly back off of Office dependence. But it won't be complete for quite a long time if at all.

Re: was it os x?

[soft_guy]

OS X changes *nothing*.

Microsoft would call up Dell and say, "ship MacOS X on one single box and your price on Windows will triple."

And that will be the end of OS X on PCs. They killed Be in this manner and they can and will do it again.

The average user isn't going to care about OS X any more than they did about MacOS. I doubt that most non Mac users have any idea what the difference is between MacOS and MacOS X.