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Apple's Colossal Disappointment?

Posted by Zonk on from the more-a-blunder-than-anything-else dept.

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."

8 of 640 comments (clear)

  1. Apple is in catbird seat by gsfprez · · Score: 4, Interesting

    there is nothing at all stopping apple from doing exactly what this guy says...

    When the conditions are most ripe...
    when Apple is ready to face that challenge from a support perspective...
    when Microsoft becomes more loathed with the release of Vista which will have 8,000 viruses out for it BEFORE its released...

    you don't walk into a saloon and just start shooting up the place even if you're packing a big-ass gun. You wait to size up the situation, you make sure that you're transition to Intel is complete and solid, and you make your move when you want to.

    Hell, just that very THREAT should be enough to keep Microsoft awake, pissing their pants at night. That's what the US military did to the Iraqi's the first Gulf War... we kept them awake for a whole 36 hours waiting for them to be so tired of staying awake, anticipating the strike that we did far more damage than if we had attacked at zero hour.

    Don't be stupid and confuse shrewd business timing tactics for making bad decisions. This linspire guy has his head shoved up his ass if he thinks Jobs isn't interested in beating the stuffing out of Microsoft.

    --
    guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
  2. Article down already, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Okay, let's look at this:

    1) Robertson criticizes Apple for not porting OS X to work on stock PCs.

    2) Robertson happens to be the head of a company competing for those very desktops.

    Why would he really want Apple to step into the market he himself is trying to gain market share in? Maybe, just maybe, he's riding on Apple's popularity as an opportunity to promote his own solutions?

    Nah. That's just crazy. :)

    (On a side note, I saw him give a presentation once, and before he started the presentation he asked how many people owned/used iPods. Only a few hands went up. Then, during his presentation where he spoke about their "LTunes" and their iTMS clone, he criticized iPod for being hard to use, saying thigns like "how do you turn this thing off? This thing is hard to use. We practiced turning it on, but we didn't practice turning it off..." I'm sorry, he's either so brain-dead he can't use a consumer electronics device with clearly labeled play and stop buttons on it, or he's playing to the ignorance of the crowd. The former makes him stupid, the latter makes him dishonest. And I don't think he's THAT stupid. ;-)

  3. Re:Apple isn't stupid by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm still waiting for Sony to make a similar decision: are they a consumer electronics manufacturer or a media company?

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  4. Re:Follow Microsoft by happyemoticon · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Microsoft's profits come from the huge number of windows sold

    Most copies of Windows come with a brand new computer. Dell probably pays less than $25 a pop for these, which is not a ton of revenue. When you factor in the costs of R&D, it's a shitty profit margin. They make their big bucks from applications like Office.

    wouldn't you think that this would also work for apple

    No, it really wouldn't. Microsoft only works because they're a monopoly. If Apple were to start behaving like a monopoly with 15% market share, they would die.

  5. Hasn't this been done to death? by Durandal64 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Let's say Apple releases OS X x86 for generic x86 hardware. It's a box right next to Windows XP. What happens?
    • Some people buy it. Quite a few people who buy it find out that OS X doesn't support their particular hardware configuration. These people each tell 10 other people that OS X sucks because they'd have had to upgrade their hardware to use it. OS X gets bad word-of-mouth and quickly dies.

      After all, Apple have significantly less resources to test OS X with the wide range of x86 hardware out there than Microsoft does, and even Microsoft can't get it right half the time. If they were to dedicate the required time and energy to making sure it worked on as many configurations as reasonable, OS X for x86 would put Longhorn to shame in the "RSN" department with all the delays it'd experience.
    • Say Apple, by some miracle, manages to support as many configurations as Windows does (or close enough). What then? Microsoft undercuts the shit out of them, that's what. OEM's like Dell would get huge discounts as long as they agreed not to sell OS X on any of their boxes. The worst thing that happens to Microsoft is they get another DoJ slap on the wrist, but in the end they've eliminated the most viable competitor to come along in the last decade. Even if that's not the exact method they use, rest assured, they'll find some way to pummel Apple out of existence. That $40 billion warchest would see to that.
    • Say the DoJ actually grows a shrivel of integrity and stops Microsoft before they can obliterate Apple completely. Apple has a great OS that runs on a wide range of commercially available hardware and costs only $129. Their hardware sales dry up, and they're forced to rely on OS X revenue, iTunes Music Store revenue (barely turns a profit) and iPods (how much longer till market saturation?). Not a great position to be in. Profits plummet, investors lose confidence and Apple's stock sinks.

    This is why geeks aren't in charge of companies. If I were to speculate, I'd say this is Apple's strategy.

    1. Release Intel-based boxes and become a sort of "testbed" for new Intel technology. Since Apple control their hardware, they can afford to adopt things like EFI before anyone else. The new boxes are faster, cheaper and Apple gets all the latest and greatest stuff as soon as Intel can deliver. Geeks complain about Apple locking people into their hardware.
    2. Being sick of Windows, people buy these new, cheaper Macs with assurances that they can always install Windows if they aren't satisfied with the experience. Geeks complain more and warn of the Coming of the Cracked Mac OS X x86 Torrent. This holy torrent will, they claim, herald an end to Apple's hardware lock-in, since everyone will now simply buy cheap PCs and install The Holy Cracked Mac OS X on them. They refuse to acknowledge that normal people don't want to build their own PCs and will never know The Holy Cracked Mac OS X even exists.
    3. The Holy Cracked OS X arrives. Geeks begin pirating OS X. Normal people don't notice and continue buying Apple's hardware.
    4. Longhorn comes out, no longer a distant Vista. Leopard is there to meet it. Apple trashes Windows Vista for sucking. Microsoft ignores Apple.
    5. OS X's popularity grows, but the price of Apple's hardware still puts some people off. Apple, having been working in secret, licenses OEMs a version of Mac OS X that installs on their machines. Dell and HP begin selling machines with OS X on them. (Apple refuses to be associated with eMachines and Gateway. Steve may or may not say they suck at a keynote address.)
    6. Geeks complain more about how they can't get a supported version of OS X for their $300 custom PCs. Normal people remain unaware.
    7. This stupid "colossal disappointment" crap fades from memory.
    8. The entertainment industry begins imposing absurd DRM restrictions on everything up to and including what pixels are displayed on your screen. OS X does not adopt these ridiculous restrictions and becomes even more popular as th
    1. Re:Hasn't this been done to death? by mstone · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There's another path leading out from roadmap item #1:

      Apple becomes the company that creates markets for all the Really Cool Stuff that will make its way into the commodity PC market two or three years later, once sufficient consumer demand exists. Apple gets first-mover advantage on all that tech, which means:

      2a. Apple's branding of the technology goes into the cultural mindset. Face it, the term 'podcasting' is a kick in the balls for the marketing department of any other portable-audio-device vendor.

      3a. Apple sticks to the "limited, 'overpriced' hardware" model, but becomes known as the platform to own if you really want to be on the cutting edge. Apple's market share grows 'modestly' to cover the 20% of the market that generates 80% of the profit.

      4a. Apple gets a tasty new line of hardware design, middleware, and brand licensing once Microsoft, Dell, et al decide enough of a market exists to warrant adopting the new technologies.

      5a. Apple develops a good relationship with Intel's R&D group, meaning some of Intel's resources get devoted to creating Apple's Next Big Thing, which can then be turned around and licensed to the PC market once sufficient consumer demand exists.

      It isn't unreasonable to think that Apple could get $15-25 in technology and brand licensing for every Windows box sold, without ever having to license OS X itself. And the direct revenue from Apple's own version of the technologies, the tighter integration with Intel's R&D wing, the massive branding potential, and the increased market share wouldn't hurt either.

      We geeks need to realize that an OS isn't a single, monolithic product. It's a whole package of things, and Apple can make a whole ton of money licensing individual items from the package without ever licensing the whole 'OS' package itself.

  6. Re:Apple isn't stupid by NeedleSurfer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No offense but Apple of all company can be pretty stupid sometimes... They introduced/created/managed some of the greatest innovation this industry has ever seen in ways that never got them where they should be.

    They are exceptionnal engineers and very lousy businessman, let's hope they try to change in the near future...

  7. Re:Apple isn't stupid by hkmwbz · · Score: 4, Interesting
    "Linux continues the march critical desktop mass"
    What's funny is that I keep seeing Linux geeks on Slashdot bragging about how they've made the switch to the great Mac, and how they can't understand why they didn't do it earlier. I never see comments about Slashdotters switching from Mac to Linux or Windows. It's always the other way around. And it's not just a few comments. It seems that every time Mac is brought up on Slashdot, people are lining up to tell everyone how they ditched Windows/Linux and went with mac.

    Funny, isn't it?

    (I am a Windows user.)

    --
    Clever signature text goes here.