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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.""
Seriously, Apple has already cast their dice in a move away from computing. iPod, iPhone, iThisandthat are moves that show that Apple isn't really committed to long term computing at least in the traditional sense. Application developers have already felt the sting of the insular computer as appliance strategy. Without real applications (which might or might not last in their Office and Photoshopy forms) OSX has little potential as an ongoing consumer and business platform.
All that said, working with production apps like Adobe CS or Office is unquestionably cheaper on Windows. The workflow is virtually indistinguishable (I continue to work with both) and users won't care. For consumers, it might be that they just want an Internet appliance with unified consumer level apps. For them, OSX will be fine with the iLife suite. Not pro level, but pretty and tightly integrated. Of course, if those same consumers want to game then they'd better like WoW, because that's about it.
Apple doesn't really offer a professional platform no matter how handy a unix command line and perl scripting are. I remember when they tried harder and in fact had a richer environment of third party developers. Tight intergration of app and OS has killed the third party ecosystem on MacOS X which is ironic, really since that's usually what Microsoft is accused of.
Oh, and the article is about hardware vendors competing, not really Apple v. Microsoft.
Dell and Gateway do great in the corporate world, which is a space Apple has yet to penetrate to any large degree, because the customer doesn't fit their product space.
What kind of crazy assumptions and blinders go into that conclusion? What exactly does Apple offer that does not fit the corporate customer? How does Windoze fit them better? Are you trying to tell me that fewer features for more money is what big dumb companies want? Bah! companies need to get their work done and everything else is a costly distraction. The more tools they have to do that and the less they cost, the better the corporate user works.
Neither company fits what big companies need. The only advantage non free software enjoys right now is in multi media and non free entertainment content. If companies really care about that, Apple is the winner. In every other category, free software wins. Right now, free software offers control, hardware costs, flexibility, stability and applications people in the non free software world envy. User created tools do the user's work better than boxed bits.
Don't cry about legacy systems holding them back either. Those are non free problems that go away as soon as you get out of the non free world. The longer companies wait, the more they pay and the harder it gets. Every dollar you spend on non free software is another dollar the non free software companies use to build the next trap for your data. Now, as M$ transitions to Vista, is the best time to jump. Wine, crossover office, email exporters and all sorts of other tools work with current M$ junk. Vista will, I'm sure, break many of those tools and make things harder again. Rather than spend lots of money on a Vista downgrade, people should be making a free software upgrade. Apple and M$ have their legacy niches, and that's where they should be deployed until those gaps are filled. Many of those gaps can be filled with virtual computing. Actual needs, like small scale movie making and drafting, would give non free a vanishing minority OS share.
Finally, as non affiliated computer customization and sales companies, both Dell and Gateway should be able to sell any of the above to any company. That they can't is one of the biggest downers of non free software. The game only works as long as everyone co operates to screw the customer and each other. The first company that breaks out of the game is going to be the biggest winner. When the rest follow, they will all have to compete on an even playing field of hardware and organizational merit.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The secret here is that the group thus described turns out to be the vast majority of the marketplace. A tiny little group called "The Rest of Us."
comma
...I don't consider milking a small group of consumers with their over priced computers "taking MS on the desktop"......
I don't either. Its a big hardware market out there, but Apple is on the road to getting the most profitable slice thereof. They will take a big bite from both the computer makers and folks like Sony and the consumer electronics pie. It is possible that once DRM finally dies, Apple and MS will work together much more than they have in the past. If Apple and even Linux together do take 40% of the market, MS will still make a lot of $$$ from their office programs. Even now, it must be worthwhile for them to support the Mac. They may not be getting rich on the Mac side of their business, but they are not going broke either. MS has to be careful however, that the likes of Google don't steal their lunch.
If the geeks and computer lovers that so selflessly work on Linux would ever manage to put on ordinary user hats, rather than geek garb, Linux may also get about 20% of the computing pie, mostly in business. I have tried Linux and it is very good. However It requires too much knowledge about computing and computers to be ever used by Grandma and Grandpa, without the support of knowledgeable relative or friend.
All theory is gray
Guys, for goodness' sake stop commenting on this flood of verbal diarrhea, you're just encouraging him.