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Apple's Leopard Strategy to Kill Microsoft and Dell?
RX8 writes "A Digital Trends article suggests that Apple's Leopard agenda is to get Windows users to use Apple hardware then convert them to the Apple camp and that Apple will also be directly targeting Dell by offering a better experience when it comes to media and related tasks. Lastly, they suggest that Steve Jobs held back on showing more Leopard features so people would not get too excited and stop buying in 2006. 'If you get too excited about what is supposed to be an incredibly amazing product you simply won't buy a new Apple this year.'"
Of course apple is trying to convert users away.. However, why would they expect people to run Windows on Apple hardware? People switch to a Mac mostly for OSX (Altho the hardware is nice looking).. In addition, Dells market is very different from Apples, Dell is cheap to the masses, Apple is for the few...
Apple has made forrays into the cheaper market (the mini) and Dell takes a poke at the top end (thier quad graphics solutions/purchase of Alienware), but they both have primarily differnt markets.
People shouldn't assume that Apple want's to be the dominant controller, just because other companies think that way, there is much profit to be made by being select too (I would imagine Apples profit per unit sold is much greater then Dells, much like Nintendos standard "make a profit not control the market" stance grants them)
Apple is competitive on price-- the low-end just doesn't go as low. So Dell sells a $300 desktop, and Apple doesn't compete in that market. But you can't compete with Dell in that market, either, because they sell high-quality cheap crap in massive quantities, and they get as good prices as anyone. The only way to get a computer out the door for less than Dell is to sell low-quality cheap crap, and you'll probably still need to take some losses. The profit margins on those $250 Dells are just miniscule, and you can't under-cut that very much. So if you're waiting for a $100 Mac mini, you'll be waiting for a while.
So, uhm, Apple is, uhm, trying to compete, uhm, with, uhm,their competitors.
Thanks a lot for this insightful article Mr. Enderle....
Don't forget that the author is Rob Enderle, who tends to defend Microsoft and SCO with all his heart and bitches regularly on Apple and Linux... Do a quick Google on him...
"I haven't seen Jaguar, yet"
Jaguar?? I presume you meant to say "Leopard"
"I do know watching a 640x480 WMV on OSX is like upsampling a 160x120 video into 1080 high-def- UGLY"
Not at all. A 640x480 wmv file on windows has the same resolution as on OS X. They play fine with the flip4mac plug-in for quicktime. VLC can handle a lot of them too.
I chose to end my comments, not with a rim shot, but a long decaying F#7sus4
FTFA:
"However, Steve Jobs is the master of being your best buddy while planning to stab you in the back. His biographies are filled with stories that do more than suggest that if he wants what you have, you'd better grab it and run for the hills."
Please. History is littered with the corpses of companies with which Microsoft formed a "strategic partnership"-- The MS people stick around and play nice for a while, then one day the other company gets notified that Microsoft wants to go in another direction so the partnership is over. Then a couple months later Microsoft unveils a competing product and kills the company with which they partnered.
The best historical example I can think of is Go Corp in the late 80s/early 90s-- Microsoft partnered with them, stole their stuff and created Pen Windows to crush them. You can get accounts of it from both sides if you read these two books. However, Microsoft is doing the exact same thing right now: They are desperate to take marketshare from iPod/iTunes. To that end, their partnerships to make portable players and sell music under the "PlaysForSure" moniker have been miserable failures-- so now, they are screwing their partners and rolling their own solution in-house, Zune, which is stated incompatible with all the PlaysForSure stuff.
~Philly
That's the job of Puma.
Then Ocelot will take out HP.
Marmoset, once released, will end IBM.
Finally, Mr. Whiskers Boddington (the name of Jobs' childhood cat) will make Google irrelevant.
Then we'll get those full-screen iPods everyone's been wanting. wheeee
Could you please flag articles by this unmitigated idiot so I don't wast the click. Reading his drivel is not worth anybodys time.
The article is written by none other than Rob (I wannabe John Dvorak) Enderle, the same clown who supported SCO's claims in their ongoing lawsuit against IBM. He now appears to be trying to get page hits by trolling the user communities of both Microsoft and Apple with outlandish opinions.
The whole idea that Apple could 'kill' Microsoft or Dell is too far-fetched to even consider. The only way either company could die is by suicide.
Stop repeating the same crap people say every day. This 'conventional wisdom' that 'dells are good enough' is total crap.
What constitutes 'good enough'? Did their previous computer completely break, or are thy looking for something better? Wasn't there previous computer 'good enough' for 90% of possible tasks?
My 486 was 'good enough' to run netscape in 1995. It was 'good enough' to connect to the internet and run any programming language, windows 2000 or linux. However, I upgraded, not because my computer wasn't 'good enough' but because for X dollars I could get an (X+?) better experience, and since used the computer many hours a day, this improved my life. I wasn't looking for the least possible computer which would fit my set of requirements, I was looking for the computer that was the best computer I could get for the money I thought was reasonable to spend.
People like to buy things which they will enjoy using, whether it's a Dell or an Apple. That is why people buy leather couches (who could possibly say that cloth isn't 'good enough') and wide screen plasma TV's. That's why my wife picked out the Ethan Allen furniture instead of the stuff at Walmart. Nobody can say that a walmart bookshelf isn't 'good enough' to hold books. It does the job exactly as well as any other bookshelf. I'm probably a little stupid for spending orders of magnitude more. But I'm not dirt poor (anymore) and when I look at the furniture I got I am much happier sitting next to it day after day than I would be watching walmart pressboard slowly melt and chip away.
That is why I do much of my work on a powerbook. Sure, I could still be using my $1000 dollar Toshiba Satilite I bought in 2003. In every way it is 'good enough' to do everything I wanted to do. But it was hot, the screen resolution was low, and unlike my powerbook, it wasn't a joy to use. I find myself using the powerbook differently than I would have used the Toshiba (I gave it to a friend). I pull it out and am not as resistant to stopping work for short intervals. I can put it away without a lengthy shutdown procedure (close the lid and it is instantly in standby). I can pull it out and actually work from battery if I want to show someone something. It doesn't weight nearly as much, and it is far more durable.
That doesn't even take OS-X into account. It is fantastic. I now have the power of Bash and a unix environment, with python built in as well, with the ease of use and multimedia integration of Windows (although it is really several times better than Windows). And everyone in my family can use it without being taught to do every little thing.
I just 'sold' my mac mini to my father at a big loss (family discount?), but now he will actually be able to use his computer. He is the person you describe in your posting. His beige box duron I built for him before I knew better is 'good enough' to check email. He runs outlook express, and occasionally gets massive virus infections that i have to clean off (even though he has up to date virus scan). Despite this necessary expert help every few months, and the maintenance tasks it requires he considers it 'good enough'. He can't buy a digital camera because he wouldn't know how to set it up (he could easily do this with a mac) but that is 'good enough'. He can't accomplish anything on the computer besides pga.com and outlook express. That isn't good enough.
When people say that a dell is 'good enough' what they are really saying is a dell is 'good enough for what I know how to do on a computer'. Since the vast majority of people have only used windows, they only know how to do things they can already do on windows. My father is going to be very happy with his Mac Mini, because now he can use a digital camera, now he can avoid massive virus infections, now he can manage his computer without constant outside assistance. So although the old computer wasn't very good for him at all, he thought it was ok, because it allowed him to act within the bounds of computer use as he understood him.
Those bounds are about to be pushed way out.
WMV's look identical on the Mac as they do on Windows. Its the exact same file. They can be played through QuickTime using Flip4Mac, VLC, or mplayer without problems.
WMV and Real are just as good on the Mac as they are in Windows.
For proof that this post is rubbish, look at the fact that the poster refers to "Jaguar" That was the code name for 10.2. That was many years ago.
Debunked.
Apple positions itself as a high-end vendor, as do many other companies. Why does that concept confuse so many people only when it applies to computers?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
What "current price differentials"? You mean the Mac Pro being priced $1000 less than a comparably configured Dell?