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Can Apple Take Microsoft on the Desktop?
An anonymous reader writes "RDM asks Can Apple Take Microsoft on the Desktop?, a comparison of recent sales and profits and the future outlook for Macs and PCs. It's the opinion of the article's author that Apple doesn't have to take a majority share of the desktop market to win. The key is to take the most valuable segments of the market. They show via a few quick financial numbers that even though Apple is selling fewer machines, they're making more money per machine than your Dells or your Gateways. Not being beholden to Microsoft gives them a big advantage when competing with traditional PC sellers. Once Apple is positioned, Microsoft will be forced to choose whether it wants to battle Mac OS X for control of the slick consumer desktop, or repurpose Windows as a cheaper, mass market alternative to Linux in corporate sales. If it doesn't make a choice, the company will face difficult battles on two fronts.""
I for one though, do not like Apple and its OSX as a platform and wonder why people say it's very good as a platform.
I don't like their hardware strategy, but I like OS X because it requires far less effort to maintain it than anything else I've used. I like it that there's no registry that can get corrupted such that one installer can ruin everything, and most programs don't need an installer or uninstaller (drop the program icon to trash & empty usually removes the program), and that there's nowhere nearly the dependency hell of any other OS I've used. I also like the fact that I can actually force a user account to have no admin priviledges and the software would actually work. This works under UNIX, but for my family, there's always one program that they need that pukes when it doesn't have admin priviledges.
The thing is with Apple you only have one supplier, Apple, and one price, what they say is what you pay, you can't shop around at all. With PC's you have dozens of supplier to choose from. So finding a PC maker that is selling a system at a similar price to a similar Apple system is not difficult. However it is also not difficult to find PC makers selling systems at a lower price than Apple, it's called shopping around, something you are unable to do when buying from Apple.
So yes, you can show me plenty of examples of expensive PC's and say Apple is on par with pricing. But I can reply right back; I just bought an Acer Aspire 5102: dual-core AMD processor, 1 gig of ram, 120 gig harddrive, 15.4" screen, dvd-burner, built in webcam and ati graphics. All of it for 675 bucks, delivered to my door, for just an hour or two shopping around on the internet. Show me an Apple laptop even close to that configuration for that price and I'll eat my hat.
"It coudl cause a push for some companies to adopt cheap Macs on the desktop. Maybe if Apple can bring the price of the Mini back down."
It is not a question of cost. Mac are quite competitive compared to equivalent machine. The problem is the range of available machine. You have a *very* limited subset of hardware you can choose from Apple, and all of them are designed either for home ( cheap one ) or for very top of the range professional ( MacBook Pro, MacPro )
There is no average common machine. Example: The mac mini is slightly underspec for a developer ( mainly: harddisk sucks, only 2 GB memory max ) and the design is completely irrelevant: we have all plenty of lost space under the desk. My company buys beige ibm/dell boxes with the same spec as the mini and roughly the same price, but the fact that the dell/ibm come with standard disk in a standard ugly box is seen as a benefit, unlike in my livingroom.
Off course, there is the mac pro, but it is completely overkill, both in cost and performance. ( Again, not saying it is not competitive against similar spec machine, but that's the equivalent of 'if a knife is not good enough for hunting, we also sell machine guns' )
Instead taking an Apple computer, and then trying to configure a PC to be similar, turn it the other way. Take a bunch of random PC's, and try to get an Apple computer with the same features. Due to Apple's limited selection of hardware, almost always, the Apple computer is going to be more expensive (though you will end up with features the PC doesn't have, that doesn't mean I want to pay for them). This is especially due to the fact that you have to move up pretty far into Apple's line up to get features found on basic and mid-range PCs, like a 3.5" harddrives, expansion slots, and non-integrated graphics.
The consumer market is 40-50 percent of the total PC market.
You think that Apple is mostly selling to consumers? You're wrong.
"Apple's Macs are primarily targeted at three core markets: consumer segment (25% of Apple's PC business), education (33%), and SMB with a strong focus on creative professionals." (Deutsche Bank report citing IDC figures)
Apple is selling hundred thousands of Macs in the education sector, in this earnings call transcript Tim Cook mentions two large contracts totaling 50,000 units and this is not an uncommon occurrence.
"Ten percent of the Company's net sales in 2006 were through its U.S. education channel, including sales to elementary and secondary schools, higher education institutions, and individual customers." (Annual annual report 2006)
Apple is also doing well outside of the U.S., last year a Gartner analyst told Macworld: "For the first time, Apple is number one in the EMEA education market with 11.6 per cent of the market in Q3/2006 against 9.6 per cent in Q3/2005."
Apple is gaining market share in the consumer segment, in Q2 2005 Apple's share increased to 5.5 percent in the U.S. and 3.1 percent worldwide (Deutsche Bank report citing IDC figures). It must be higher by now, but nowhere near 33 percent!
> Where is the option to set the default web browser? Why, it's in the Safari control panel!
... everything executable gets onto the iPhone through iTunes, same as iPod
... rather than "installing software" with iPod accessories you just hook them on and they work because the software part is already in the iPod like a driver ... imagine if hardware makers gave their drivers to Microsoft and you the user just plugged stuff in and it works ... that's how Apple does it
Similarly, the option to set Firefox as the default Web browser is in Firefox.
If you don't like Safari, follow these steps:
1) drag the Safari icon to the Trash
2) optionally, empty the Trash
3) no step 3
Compare to "uninstalling IE" on Windows.
> Just like similar options -- email client, HTML editor, etc -- are on the "Internet Options" control panel on Windows
> -- but that is actually in Control Panel, not just in IE.
On the Mac, this is decentralized. Rather than tell the system what is your default editor for files that end in ".html", you tell the actual files. So if you want to always open ".html" files with Dreamweaver, then select an ".html" file and choose File > Get Info and in the inspector that appears, under Open With you can choose Dreamweaver and then click the button right next to that: "use this application to open all documents like this".
When you open a document on the Mac, the document tells the system what app to use. This enables you to have the freedom to set different HTML files to open in different applications. For example you could have the files on your Web server all set to open in BBEdit for editing, but the files that are floating around your Desktop could be set to Firefox for viewing.
> And look at how they are handling the iPhone. NO third-party apps, the end
You are wrong in a number of ways:
1) third-party apps will be available for purchase through iTunes just like iPod games, Steve said this himself the day of the announcement, the main point regarding third-party apps is that the user will not be able to download-and-install on the iPhone itself as a security measure
2) iPhone has a standard Web browser in it with HTML 4, CSS 2.1, JavaScript 1.5 therefore it runs every application on the Web right out of the box with no installing, e.g. you have Flickr and eBay ready to go instead of being able to install Tic Tac Toe
3) most of the third-party apps for current smart phones are either built into the iPhone (e.g. audio/video player) or the iPhone doesn't need them (e.g. memory optimizers that help you get more out of your 128 MB)
4) iPhone has an iPod dock connector, therefore it runs over 3000 iPod accessories and more to come
So the iPhone is not going to be empty at all. You are going to have Web applications, you are going to have all kinds of stuff coming over from your iTunes (your audio/video, iPhone apps, Contacts, etc.) and you are going to have iPod accessories. And with 8 GB of storage it is going to make the "freedom" of other smart phones look ludicrous.
> Apple controls the hardware, and prevents anyone from making other hardware on which to run Mac OS X.
No, they don't. Mac OS X itself requires Apple hardware because that is what it was designed for. Apple is not under any obligation to imitate Microsoft's business practices or licensing customs. Now that HP has destroyed its own OS projects it does not have a right to Apple's OS on the same terms it made with Microsoft.