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The Forgotten Failure of Apple's PowerTalk
DECS writes "The series of articles Why Apple Will Change TV compared how Apple is poised for success in areas where Microsoft is currently failing. But circumstances are subject to change!
Just over a decade ago, Apple began facing serious legacy problems with its platform, with many parallels to today's Microsoft. Examining Apple's dramatic fall provides a series of notable platform lessons that no company should ignore.
A look back at the forgotten failure of Apple's PowerTalk:
Apple vs. Microsoft in the Enterprise"
1. Don't try to sell a futuristic product that doesn't quite work yet; instead, talk about it while selling as existing product that can compete in the current market.
2. Don't attempt to fire conceptual ideas at an imagined market; instead, craft finished products that solve real problems and can support a sustainable market.
3. Ship a functional product and then constantly refine it; Real world use and years of ongoing refinement create enormous value for a product.
Now, according to their lessons, google with all their betas must be a rightout disaster, shouldn't it?
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
What's with the excited exclamation mark? In something purporting to be a news story/blurb i usually expect a recitation of facts combined with a calm statement of opinion. Shouting makes it sound like either a rant or something intended as a dire warning. Are you a fan of microsoft who is vehemently denying that apple will actually experience the success that some people believe they are posed for? Or are you an apple fan sending out a call to arms to other apple fans to make sure that this opportunity doesn't waste away? I can't tell which way you're leaning but the exclamation mark sure makes it seem like you think it's _really_ important for one reason or another.
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What kind of TV tuner would you have them install?
Analog NTSC? Great, except that it'll stop working in a few years, and the quality is abysmal by modern standards.
ATSC? You get high-def, but you need an antenna, and even then you only get the big networks, which is a big step down to people used to 100+ channels of cable.
Clear QAM? It lets you use cable, so no antenna, but chances are you'll still only get the major networks, and it's arguably a greater pain in the ass than ATSC: many cable companies (Comcast, I'm looking at you) strip the metadata from their clear-QAM channels, making things like program guides really painful to use. And at the end of the day, you'll still be stuck with only the major broadcast networks, because those are the only ones that the cablecos are required to broadcast unencrypted. Everything else requires a proprietary converter box.
The solution would be CableCard, but there are still a lot of areas where you either can't get one, or are treated like shit and get a degraded level of service if you do. (And you pay several extra bucks for the privilege of renting the card.)
Given the state of the market right now, I wouldn't ship a computer with a TV tuner in it, either. If the FCC were to get its act together and really make CableCard the standard, and eliminate proprietary converter boxes, then I think you'd see an explosion in the types of set-top boxes and DVRs. I have no doubt Apple would be at the top of the list.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Digital cable tuners are supposed to include a FireWire output. All Macintosh computers have FireWire inputs. So if you're a subscriber, you should already have an appropriate tuner. Or are you talking about over-the-air?
MSFT enjoyed a 7% increase in revenue last quarter alone, while AAPL's growth has been in the iPod area. There are no similarities between AAPL and MSFT in that front.
You probably didn't mean to phrase it that way, but you're totally right. Note the lack of Zune rumour sites, and general lack of enthusiasm over the Zune when compared to the iPod.
Now, as for the marketshare aregument: you're also right. Apple's marketshare has fallen since 1994/5. It has also improved since 1997/8. Moving past statistics, one can look at the Wall Street perception of Apple. In 1996-7 Wall Street saw Apple in a death spiral. Their market share was swirling down the toilet, they were losing ground in the education and enterprise sectors, and Windows 95/98 was generating a much bigger buzz than anything Apple was producing. Then Apple turned around: they got Jobs back at the helm, released a product that created a media sensation (iMac -- for examples, look at Newsweek's and Time's coverage of it) and started inching away from the edge of a financial cliff. Following that with Mac OS X, and the iPod, Wall Streets prediction of Apple's future is pretty damn bright.
You mention Microsoft. I say don't bother. They don't really compete. Apple makes personal computers and iPods. Microsoft makes an operating system and a game console (and soon another iPod "killer"). With the exception of the forthcoming Zune, there's not really much competition between the two. People cite Mac OS X as competing against Windows -- often referencing Vista -- but it's not really. Mac OS X only runs on Macs (officially.) Windows runs on commodity hardware. Apple makes Mac OS X to bundle with their hardware. Microsoft makes Windows because it's the cornerstone of their business. There's far less competition than people think.
The real litigious bastards...
Another Apple project quickly forgotten was OpenDoc, which was something like OLE for Microsoft. With OpenDoc, at least the Cyberdog browser was developed (1996-97), together with object embedding capabilities on other software. It lasted just a bit.
As an email gateway developer, I worked with Exchange since it's inception and I attempted to use AOCE. When I compare that experience with what's going on now, I reach a very different conclusion.
Exchange started out life in the X.400 world. (If memory serves, Microsoft bought an X.400 product from someone else and GUIfied it.) This meant that even before the advent of the Internet Connector you could connect to Exchange using "standard" X.400 protocols. (I say "standard" because X.400 is so large and messy that pretty much everyone who implemented it was forced to deviate from the specifications in one way or another.) Not easy, but doable, and more to the point, doable from any platform able to deploy an OSI network stack. As Exchange shifted towards SMTP things improved to the point where Exchange was able to connect to existing facilities with little effort. (The article is wrong, BTW, in claiming that modem SMTP was around when Exchange first shipped. It was around but Microsoft chose to ignore it.)
AOCE, OTOH, only provided vast, arcane, incomplete and poorly documented Mac-specific API. The underlying protocols weren't documented at all. We tried hard to figure how to interface with this mess, even sitting down to discuss our issues with Apple folks at one point, but eventually gave up. And I'm talking a group of people who developed successful gateways to X.400-1984, X.400-1988, cc:Mail, Microsoft Mail, Novell MHS, and GroupWise among others. Either we are fools who got incredibly lucky several times over, or AOCE was an unmitigated disaster. And I don't think we were lucky fools.
But Apple learned their lesson. As the article points out, they now leverage open standards whenever possible. You can talk to a lot of Apple's new stuff over protocol. Sure, the APis are still there, and some of them are pretty nasty, but in a lot of cases you don't have to use them. Apple is also very active in various standards organizations (I wish they had had more success with Bonjour in the IETF, but that's a different matter).
Microsoft, OTOH, has utterly failed to learn anything from their experience with Exchange. They still roll their own whenever possible. They don't document the protocols they use, only the APIs, and of course those are only available on Windoze. I used to see lots of Microsoft people at standards meetings but not so many any more.
Of course things can change, but once things are headed in a particular direction they tend to stay on that course, even if it is a bad one. Everything I see about Microsoft says to me that they are on the wrong course and aren't doing anywhere near enough reinvention to correct it. The exact opposite appears to be the case with Apple.
I have to say I have been very impressed by Apple's strategic manovering over the last five years or so. Whilst Sony and Microsoft has been clashing heads trying to use gaming machines as a trojan horse to become the digital hub of people's living rooms, Apple has quietly been putting together all the pieces it needs to do so in a much more sophisticated manner.
Personally, I don't think Steve Jobs is very interested in conquering the enterprise desktop these days, he's got his eyes fixed on potentially a much bigger pie - becoming the digital media hub of people's homes.
Seriously, companies don't really learn from another company's trials and tribulations. At some point they all suffer from the same thing, which will cause them to experience "a downfall". This malady is:
"But we're [insert company name here]!"
I know it looks innocuous, but let's see that in action!
1988, IBM was having big problems with management bloat, a stagnant product line, and a poor customer experience. But if you asked someone there 'Why would I buy from you when I could buy from Compaq or some other less expensive, more innovative competitor?' the response was invariably, "But we're IBM!"
In 1998, SGI started shipping their coolest, most important product ever. The $15,000 Windows NT workstation. If you asked an executive at SGI 'Why would I pay $15000 for a Windows NT machine with a nice graphics card when I can build a whitebox with an Nvidia Riva TNT card for far less money?', the response was "But we're SGI!"
Today, ask a SUN exec 'Why should I pay $X for a solaris workstation when I can buy assemble a box for $500 running Linux that will do the same thing?' What do they say? "But we're SUN!"
It's been my experience that this becomes a problem at most sucessful companies, and if you pay attention, you'll see it's cyclical. The company adopts this mentality, loses customers, re-vamp's their product line, customer service, etc. Gains customers, becomes successful again, and ultimately repeats their mistakes and do the whole thing over again.
Sad.
-Runz
Daniel Eran writes a lot of pro-mac articles which leads one to believe that you can't really take any of his opinions on Apple with much weight. The articles are really great to read if you are an Apple fan but, otherwise I can see how they might come off a little bit overly infatuated with Apple. If he could use more facts and cite support then I'd find them a little more insightful, as it is, they remind me of those persuasive writing assignments from English class, except all with an pro-Apple slant. Seriously though, read one or two the articles and see if you don't get the same feeling.
.... but they ARE competing for mindshare... and right now Apple is winning hands down. They seem to have the midas touch where everything they come out with turns to gold. Currently, Microsoft is the exact opposite. An important point to note in the article is how the author discusses how much of Microsoft's monopoly is attributed to customers choosing an MS product over a competitors. They may have 95% market share but its also true that 95% of the time Windows is sold, there's no choice involved. You get it pre-installed on your new computer. Whereas Apple's minute market share is completely derived from people exercising choice. You have to actually choose to buy a mac. This might not be such a big deal right now but Microsoft is definitely worried about it. Mac OS X may not directly compete with Windows per say... but its rising popularity should and does worry the big giant.
The point of this article, and the lesson from countless years of business case studies, is that mature products are easily reproduced by cut rate competitors, and the only way to stay ahead of those competitors is to continuously refine products into compelling new versions. This is as true for a box of tissue as it is for a computer.
IBM failed to innovate in the 80's, so the cut rate competitor MS won market share. Apple failed to innovate in the 90's, so the cut rate competitor MS won some more market share. In fact, the only thing the article seems to have missing is that MS is always in the position of cut rate competitor, so does not have to innovate so much as wait for others to falter, then come in cheaper commodity products.
This is changing, as is the norm. At some point the cut rate competitor wants to play with big boys, which is where MS has been moving to. This is dangerous as one can make money selling cheap commodity products, but selling higher end products puts you into the rat race. MS has faltered in many of these ventures, and the only success is the game market. Even in the server market they seem to competing with cut rate and legacy *nix installs rather that modern IBM type systems. But MS has enough money and time to make it through. Only time will tell what will emerge.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
The article states that Apple Enginners and Microsoft Markets.
The authors understanding of what marketing is, is wrong. I think it would have been more correct to say that Microsoft Sells.
The classical defination of marketing is to find out what a customer needs and then produce that for them.
http://www.hawknest.com/
One thing I find noteworthy here is that, if Microsoft were really were making a business out of selling a superior OS, Apple wouldn't really be a threat to them-- at least not any more than Dell is a threat to Microsoft for offering Wordperfect with their computers. In a lot of ways, Apple's switch to Intel should have been a happy day for Microsoft, since it essentially turned Apple into another vendor of hardware for which Windows could be sold.
The real problem is, "producing superior operating systems" hasn't been Microsoft's core business for years now. Instead they've been riding off of vendor lock-in. And so, just like W.I.N.E., Apple is a threat to Microsoft simply by giving users an option of running Photoshop (and other software not present on open-source operating systems) without buying Windows. The mere existence of an alternative is a serious threat to Microsoft's business model, a model which consists mainly of vendor lock-in. Microsoft can't afford to let users have any choice, or they'll lose market share.
I don't think this article or /. entry adds value in any significant sense. Sure, it's great to consider in hindsight theis experience, but the criticism is unnecessary if not unfounded.
Apple addressed PowerTalk and OpenDoc (and various other initiatives) by moving to a completely different operating system. They saw the fundamental shortcomings of their ideas and their approaches and addressed them. Now, they are leveraging all the potential of OS X's *nix core in a myriad of ways.
They didn't forget the failure. They addressed it.
"Pushing the technological envelope"? Wake up and stop drinking the kool-aide.
Google search? Search results 90% of the time are astroturf sites and spam blogs. I've completely given up trying to find product reviews via google, for example.
Froogle? Search for some computer component part number. Let's say the same # is used by sewing machines. Click on "Computers" without clicking the subcategory "motherboards"- the parts you wanted are GONE. What the hell? Go back, click motherboards- the parts are there. Froogle is also completely incompetent when it comes to matching/grouping/consolidating products, or even matches like "1GB PC133"...half the time, that'll yield 512MB dimms which happen to have a link to 1GB dimms on the same page!
Gmail can't let you do more than ONE thing at a time. Want to have a draft of an email open while reading a second for reference? Tough. GMail can't filter by custom headers- which makes it absolutely useless for subscribing to mailing lists. Gmail blatantly and heavily encourages top-posting and full quoting, much to the annoyance of mailing list managers everywhere. GMail was a GIANT step backwards in email client functionality. I never understood what the hell all the fuss was about, and I still don't after using it for a few months.
Google Maps is "the best map client around", except MS's local.live.com blows it out of the water; pushpins, saved addresses, side birds-eye views, etc...and doesn't have the serious problems Google Maps does with serving up image tiles; half the time, tile images aren't loaded at all, or are loaded in the wrong order. Why in 2006 do I have to keep entering my home/work address as starting points/destinations, when I could have Mapquest save addresses back in 1998!?
Google Analytics? What if I'd like to do something as simple as track my visitor retention rate over time, to see if it's going up/down? Pretty simple, right? Can't do it; you can't track anything over time except for a few basic parameters. Other bug-based web-trend software is far better, and Google appears to have done squat with Analytics, which they bought off another company!
Please help metamoderate.