Apple's Device Model Beats the PC Way

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Walt Mossberg argues in the Wall Street Journal that Apple's model for PCs and devices is beating Microsoft's. In early battles for dominance of the PC market, Microsoft's component-based platform crushed Apple's end-to-end model, he says. But in today's post-PC era, where the focus is on music players, game consoles and cellphones, the end-to-end model is the early winner. From the column: 'Even the Mac isn't as closed as its critics charge. It's still designed to work with Apple's own operating system and software. But it can handle all the common files Windows uses, can network with Windows machines, and can use all of the common Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice. The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows. Heck, the newest Macs can even run Windows itself.'"

Comments

History Repeats Itself

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

The jury is still out on whether the end-to-end model will prevail in the long term. Many at Microsoft, and some outside analysts as well, believe the new devices will eventually succumb to the component model, and that Apple's success with the iPod will fade, just as its early dominance of the PC market did.

I'd have to disagree with the above, based on the following observation:

I believe we're seeing an evolution of PCs and electronic devices that closely parallels the evolution of the electric motor. When electric motors were first available to the public, it was in a general-purpose, component model. You could buy an electric motor, and it would normally come with different belts or chains allowing you to attach them to a wide variety of other devices. Nowadays, electric motors are much more within the end-to-end model, in which they are made for a specific task and embedded in the end product.

Computing devices seem to be following that same general curve...becoming more specialized, embedded, and specific-to-task (one example: console games vs. gaming PCs). Given this inexorable movement away from the general-purpose to the application-specific, I'd have to guess that the end-to-end model will be excercising progressively more dominance in the market as time passes.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[BasilBrush]

The electric motor analogy to computer devices is one of the key arguments in the book "The Invisible Computer", by Donald A Norman in 1999. Coincidentally he used to work for Apple. Which probably made the book and his theory rather popular there. Perhaps it even provided the catalyst for Apple deciding to do the iPod. It's probably one of the best example of the kind of "invisible computer"/"information appliances" he described.

It was a good book, and probably worth reading again now to see how his predictions are going.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[amliebsch]

I think your analogy only works for "computers" to include any turing-complete integrated circuit. In that case, computers, just like motors, are already manufactured in a dizzying array of form factors, capabilities, and functions. Specialized computers are manufactured for practically every consumer product that uses electricity.

But a PC is intended and designed to be as general-use as possible. The very concept of software is to enable the device to perform functions that were not contemplated at the time of manufacturing. To the extent that the PC is modular, it fills that role better, because increasing the functionality beyond the design conception is cheaper and easier. Perhaps some people would be willing to give up the flexibility of a PC in favor of something like a game console: slicker, better at doing what it was intended to do, but limited to its designed functionality. But I think many people are attracted by the open-ended nature of possibilities created by a general-purpose PC.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[be-fan]

Being happy about being able to run Windows isn't out of any thrill of running Windows. It's a pragmatic issue: now, we can run software we can't find on OS X on the Mac. Better yet, with virtualization, we can run that software in a comfortable OS X environment. The net result is that we no longer have to keep a PC around if there is some piece of software we need to run occasionally.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[BasilBrush]

But a PC is intended and designed to be as general-use as possible.

But that's just what they said about the general purpose electric motor. That's the whole point of the analogy.

As an extreme example, take Word Processing and Spreadsheet use. You may think that the same general purpose computer is best adapted to both tasks. But it's not:

Word processing on a PC is compromised because the screen is the wrong shape to fit a representation of a piece of paper on. A portrait orientation would work better. Yet for spreadsheets, landscape is better.

Likewise the keyboard is not optimised for either task. Instead of anonymous but general purpose buttons market F1-F12, and relatively arbitrary control and alt key combinations, which vary from application to application, there should be buttons marked perhaps BOLD, CENTER, STYLE etc. on the word processor and ABSOLUTE/RELATIVE or SUM on the spreadsheet.

Who knows, perhaps the spreadsheet would be better with different pointing scrolling controls. Perhaps a trackball purely for scrolling.

Perhaps the word processor should have a scanner/ocr built in. Because it doesn't need anything more than a cheap embedded CPU and no fancy 3D graphics it could have extras like that and still be a fraction of the price of a general purpose PC.

BTW, don't argue with any of the specific suggestions here. They're out of my hat and for demonstration purposes only. The point is that looking at each application separately, hardware can be designed to support a specific problem far better than the general purpose machine can. Those optimal designs would certainly be different from my examples.

I am SHOCKED!

[10Ghz]

Walt Mossberg things Macs are better than PC's?!?!?! Impossible!

post PC era?

[a_greer2005]

when did the PC die? Netcraft never mentioned that!

Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mossberg is no different than John Dvorac and Robert Cringely: he gets paid to make noise. At the end of the day he's a journalist and doesn't understand technology. If he can get a few extra tens of thousands hits from Mac phanboys dieing to hear that Steve Job's 1984 prophecy that Apple will liberate humanity, then ... hey .. whatever. I guess Mossberg and his readers are happy.

Re:Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[syphax]

I don't think that's fair. Dvorak and Cringely have a business model that's based on coming up with crazy shit.

Mossberg is a technologist for the common (business) man. He writes about technology from the perspective of a normal person (what we might call 'user').

There is nothing overly provacative over this particular theory, except that it is probably wrong. In new fields, integrated, proprietary technology usually gets the headstart because it can innovate faster (not having to worry about standards and such). But eventually, as the new field matures, innovation slows and the advantages of standardization and commoditization catch up. Here is an excellent talk by Clayton Christensen at the 2004 Open Source Business Conference. It is really an excellent talk. Christensen may not be 100% right, but he is at least mostly right, and has some great insights and stories.

Apple is kicking butt right now because they developed an awesome family of music players that while proprietary, are not overly so, decent software for managing said devices (iTunes is great at some things, sucky at others, but overall is pretty decent), and the first sane online music store (and kudos to them for their successful negotiations with the record labels). It's excellence of execution more than a winning business model. Plus, the industry's perceived need for some sort of DRM, which will let Apple sustain it's closed system for awhile.

If we ever get past the DRM BS (hah!), we'd at some point be able to buy music from store A and play it on player B. At that point, Apple will lose margin in both markets (stores and players) due to increased competition (right now they are exploiting the oft-talked about but rarely observed concept of 'synergy').

When you are the minority player in the market...

[gravyface]

you *have* to be interoperable with the market leader's file formats and software. Chalk this up as a "duh" and move on. Nothing to see here.

Re:What?

[rritterson]

That's only a DRM issue and has nothing to do with the platform itself.

As a slashdot user, I'm disappointed you didn't go on a rabid rant about how DRM is evil and will destroy everything we've ever worked for.

The article submitter...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is "Carl Bialik from WSJ" with e-mail address "wsjarticles@wsj.com"
This for an article published on the WSJ web site.
I think that about says it all.

---
This anonymous post was brought to you by the image-protected password "profuse"

But what about the Games!?

[azcoffeehabit]

Apples end-to-end device model seems to me to only be coming out of Apple's devices. Of course when you make the device, make the computer, make the operating system, and sell the service you are gonna have a good end-to-end device model. If you don't than you have a serious problem within your company.

I don't see any third parties being given access to the Mac's core to provide alternative end-to-end device solutions. Their end-to-end model is nothing more than Plug-n-Play when it comes to third partys.

My critisizm... Where are the games?
One of the biggest reasons new PCs are purchased as well as all of the new componants for the PCs are the games. Video games can be directly attributed to the reason computers are getting pushed faster and faster in the consumer market. Up until vista, the non gaming user would never need a 128Mb DX10 graphics card. People don't need a PPU to use Excel. Heck, even laptops have been hovering at 1.7Ghz for the last 3 years!

Apple has yet to get the support of the gaming development companies. Sure there are a few games getting released now and then, usually months or years after the general PC/Console release.

Has Apple even attempted to get into this market?

Re:Software is the reverse

[diamondsw]

Ha! Great in theory, but just [b]TRY[/b] to replace the Finder completely, the Dock, or Spotlight. Good luck. They should be easily replaceable (and this was the original vision in the Rhapsody Design documents), but they aren't in practice. It's still very much cathedral style, just like Windows (in that respect, anyway).

Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Skadet]

I like building my own PC's, being able to upgrade this part or the other, and being able to compare prices so I can minimize my expense as much as possible.

You end up paying one way or another. How many of us have found/been given a part (a 28.8 modem in my case, when the 14.4 was king) and spend hours getting it to work? I suppose if you don't value your time at all, your argument makes sense. But more often than not, you can either 1) buy a quality component that Just Works but costs a lot, or 2) "shop around" and "minimize expense" (at the register) and spend a few days tweaking it to work, costing you time with your wife/girlfriend/kids/dog.

My roommate, for example, bought an MB/CPU combo from Fry's along with the rest of the components necessary for a working computer. By all accounts, the thing should be cranking away, but Windows won't get through setup. For the heck of it I tried installing an old version of RH I had lying around, no luck there either. Long story short, he's wasted TONS of his own time and countless hours of mine all in the name of saving a few bucks.

By the way, the 17" Powerbook that's on my desk -- picked it up about 5 months ago. Never crashes. Installed a bluetooth KB & mouse without having to reboot(!). Running an external monitor, and it remembers that if I have my second monitor hooked up, I want the LCD's rez to be lower, but if I don't have that second monitor hooked up, I want full rez on the LCD. Point being -- the stuff just works.

I don't know diddly about Apple...

Maybe if you spent less time shopping around you'd have time to relax and read about Apple or some other tech that interests you? (BTW plenty of good resources to answer your questions above on the web).

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Golias]

The other Macs really are difficult to upgrade. Just take a stroll into an Apple store, pick up a Mac Mini and see if you can tell how to even open the case.

What is the deal with this fear of the Mac mini?

Hard-core overclocking freaks, who think nothing of sinking an entire $1500 game PC into a bath of cooking oil as a solution to keep the processor cool at 112% of the reccommended clock speed, are suddenly terrified of using a putty knife to back a few soft plastic clips on the CASE of a $600 computer.

"Woah! d00d, I heard a rumor on Slashdot that Apple might void your warranty if you even add memory to it! Better just put it up on a pedistal and never even look directly at it, or it might a'splode! I'll call a Certified tech to get this keyboard plugged in."

All I can do is shake my head in disgust.

Ultimately, Apple only needs a solid minority...

[Stick_Fig]

...to come out a winner long-term. The PC market is huge, and as long as Apple keeps its niche comparable to the market share that other hardware companies have (i.e. its market share should be compared with HP and Dell, not Microsoft), then they've succeeded in the market.

Let's stop making this a Apple v. Microsoft fight, because it hasn't realistically been one for a while.

Re:macs are great

[Wizard Drongo]

I call bullshit. My pal has a MacBookPro. It's damned cool. If I had £1500 I would have one too. It runs every game you can think of for Windows very well. Doom 3 plays flawlessly at native res, with all the options. So does HL2, GTA3, Tomb Rider Legend, and a whole shitload of older games. I don't think it can currently play older DOS-based games, but that's more that XP can't do them old games, and the MacBookPro won't run anything older than Win2k. No matter whether you love or hate Mac's, or your opinion of the switch to Intel, there is no excuse for the FUD you spouted. Now, the old PowerPC macs, yeah, due to the limitations of virtualisation couldn't do 3D, but that wasn't Apple's fault. They didn't write VirtualPC. Microsoft and before them Connectix did. But the new Macs run games exceptionally well. So much so that when the MacBookPro was launched, it was (famously) the fastest windows laptop you could buy! Please get it right in future!

Missing the change...

[alexhmit01]

Here is the thing to remember...

1985, Apple's offering is about $4000, the IBM offering is ONLY $3000... A few years later, Apple's offering remains about $3500, IBM compatibles are $2000...

Now, remember we have 20+ years of inflation... That $4000 machine from Apple is like spending $10,000 in today's dollars ($8000 from inflation, another $2000 from income increases)

For a while, the price differential was huge.

Now? The "Apple is expensive" crowd is sounding increasingly absurd. The Mac Mini is like $500-$700, the Dell is $400-$600... Sure there is a price differential, but it's now small. $100-$200 difference is NOTHING compared to the $1500 ($3000-$3500 in today's dollards) difference.

A family today often has two computers, maybe more. My Apple //c was the family computer for 5 years, because even the cheap Apple was expensive.

Five years ago, the idea of a central home computer with WinTerms seemed like a possible future. Now, why bother, the workstations are basically free. We don't have modular systems, we have digital hubs...

10 years ago I went to college with a computer containing: a motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, 3D acceleration card, ethernet card, SCSI card, sound card, 2-3 hard drives, CD-ROM, CD-Recorder, etc....

Now, I use a MacBook Pro, but it wouldn't matter if I had a PC... I'd have a machine with a keywork, mouse, monitor, and box. Upgrades? Everything is on-board, USB/Firewire peripherals add my expansion. Do I need to upgrade a video card? Why bother, when you can get an entire computer for $400-$600 why do I need replacable parts? Only on laptops where a $2k-$3k replacement cost may matter do I even think about how nice it would be for a speed up.

Computers are cheap and disposable.

Alex

Re:Modularity was because things broke easy

[cmacb]

"Heck, you can't hardly find a mother board these days without sound and network not built in."

I won't not fail to come back and not read this post when I don't have less time on my hands to not figure out what it doesn't say.

Or something.