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Why Microsoft Should Fear Apple
jcatcw writes "Computerworld's Scot Finnie says that Microsoft should be afraid because Apple has gotten smarter about how it competes. He says that it's the Parallels Desktop software that has been truly transformational for the Mac. Finnie did a simple three-month trial of the Mac last in the fall and realized four months later that he wasn't going back. Since then he's received hundreds of messages from readers who've also made the switch. 'In the end, this is about perception. It isn't about Apple's market share or even its quarterly sales numbers. (Apple's notebook computer sales for the fourth quarter were 4.1% of all portable computer sales, according to DisplaySearch.) What this is about is that Apple is reaching the right people with its product, winning new converts, Windows user by Windows user -- and creating buzz. How do you measure buzz? You don't. It's something that experienced people in this industry can just feel. And that's the condition Microsoft should fear. Because buzz can turn into something much harder to combat than sheer numbers.'"
Microsoft shouldn't be too worried until Apple begins to sell OS X for installation on hardware besides theirs. When OS X can be put on all kinds of hardware, I will gladly purchase it and I'm sure many others will as well.
How do you measure buzz? You don't. It's something that experienced people in this industry can just feel.
Sounds like the "reasons" I'm given to believe in Jesus. I really wonder if people believe in this "exists but not quantifiable in any form" business?
Since then he's received hundreds of messages from readers who've also made the switch.
The problem is, he hasn't received millions of emails from people who haven't made the switch. This is why "buzz" is misleading instead of using real data. Maybe the "buzz" leads to more people switching to Apple, but if you don't actually measure it, how would you know??
to run parallels. microsoft could give a flying fark where you run their os, as long as you buy one.
DELL or other pc manufactureres should be scared of macs.
Pure baloney, Scot Finnie.
How do you measure buzz? You don't. It's something that experienced people in this industry can just feel.
Would you buy stock in a company based on "buzz"? Doubt it. At least these days, in the post dot-bomb world anyways.
What Apple does currently have is momentum. They keep making good decisions and carving out markets. And that's why MS should fear them. MS is already losing in the junior leagues (Zune vs. iPod). Enough of that, and maybe MS will start losing in the big leagues (OS and Office).
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
After skimming TFA, it seems like the #1 reason the author claims Microsoft should fear Apple is due to Parallels on OS X. I don't quite get why this should make Microsoft shake in their boots. Parallels does not somehow allow Windows apps to run without a Windows installation (i.e. what WINE is attempting to accomplish). Therefore a license for XP/Vista/whatever is still required. If anything Microsoft should be happy that Mac users still need to own a Windows license to run apps in Parallels. It may mean that more people will buy Macs because they like the hardware and OS X, but simply owning a Mac with Parallels does not remove the user's need to run Windows apps, and therefore pay Microsoft for a license.
In my experience, only elitist techno snobs have the audacity to group all the millions of Mac users into the "too cool for you" market segment.
Were we to have an honest, reasonable discussion, I'd ask you to provide evidence that the majority of those who use Apple products are obsessed with image. I'd present dozens of product reviews in mainstream publications which praised the usability and practicality of various Apple products. But this is Slashdot, so as long as you state something as if it were an objective fact, somebody will mod you up.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
My kids are college students and always prefer Mac laptops to Windows machines every single time.
1) They don't care about the internals at all. Makes zero difference
2) They see Macs as an integrated whole without having to dick around with things
3) They see the hardware itself as being more solid
4) They see the integrated whole as being more compatible with their iPods, cameras and whatnot
5) When or if something breaks they walk it in to the Apple store, where that is the ONLY thing they fix and drop it off for repair or upgrade
6) Most college courses are online not installed so it makes little if any difference what the machine runs on its own
7) They look cooler
Don't argue with me about this. This is what people who look at a PC as an appliance like a microwave or a TV see when they see a Mac.
I am a laggard. When my XP Home machines eventually become worthless I will replace them either with miniMacs or whatever is what those are at the time, and/or Ubuntu or equivalent machines at that time. I expect this to happen in the next 3-4 years if not sooner. I have no intention of moving to Vista. Not for ideological reasons but because there will be cheaper better alternatives by then.
In the last year I've seen a number of blogs from former Microsofties, as well as the infamous Mini-Microsoft. Many of these talk about top-heavy management, unhappy staff, projects leading nowhere, ladder climbers and bleeding money through some product lines.
In isolation, individual blogs may be just some people blowing off a bit of steam, or may be representative of a few dissatisfied staffers.
Taken together, they paint a picture of a company that's in danger of losing its way.
It's hard to know just how representative the sum of these blogs is. They're all pretty self-selecting, after all. If they paint a relatively accurate picture, then Microsoft is missing some key things Apple's recently gotten right:
* Management who understand their products at every level and pitch them well. Anyone who's presented to a large crowd knows how hard this is, but Steve Jobs is a complete master at it.
* Getting the product's look and feel right first time. Pick up a new Apple product. Touch it. Look at the surfaces. They always look great. People react to this, equating professional finish with professional products.
* Focus on product lines, with no products bleeding more money with every unit sold. There's no Apple product I've heard of where each unit sold is a loss to the company. The units both R&D and then start to generate profit. Even iTunes with its razor thin profit pays for itself. This shows solid business planning, solid budgeting and is very well respected by the investors.
* Staff who keep pretty damn quiet about the internal stuff. Apple have a policy on communication, and very few staff feel they need to start some kind of Mini-Apple in response. Few companies allow staff to communicate, as it's just too easy for staff to send the wrong message. The company I work for is vast beyond the dreams of Apple or Microsoft, and we train all staff about external communications (in normal policy & procedure training). The impression Apple gives is that of a tightly run company.
Apple present as a company focused on a few core lines - home computing, professional media/art computing and entertainment. It's easy to see how just about everything they do fits those lines.
Microsoft are all over the place. Their core is clearly Windows and Office, but they've dipped metaphorical toes into media, gaming, tablet computing, robotics, handhelds, peripherals, mobile phones, web searching and more. Some non-core lines are very successful (XBox-360) but they all seem to be in the red, only able to be pursued due to the huge cash reserves brought in by the core lines. Few businesses would do this, even very rich businesses (such as GE) demand each product or division runs a profit and improves year on year. That's sustainable business practice, but Microsoft seems to believe deep pockets last forever.
Microsoft are looking tired, but they can pull things together. Cut some of the non-core lines loose - sell them off. Get out and understand how people want to use stuff before building a product (Zune wireless sharing is a notable failure here). Savage the management layers to shake out dead wood at *all* levels, review all current projects with a view to killing most of them and refocus the (smaller) company on the smaller range of product lines.
Microsoft can waste energy competing with Apple and Google, but they needn't bother. Neither is a threat and the market's easily big enough for everyone. The biggest enemy they seem to have is themselves and their existing products.
To recap a film metaphor - remember when Luke Skywalker went into that cave near Yoda's house on Dagobar? He met Darth Vader, then fought and killed him. The mask covering the head exploded, revealing Luke's own face. His greatest enemy at that point was his own nature.
Sure, you may run XP in Parallels now, but will you buy new Windows software? Will you buy anything that says 'Vista only' on the box? Or will you just slowly replace your old XP apps with Mac apps, and then forget about your VM? I would guess that the latter is more likely for most switchers.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I personally don't think it's the OS that makes you productive, but the software and how you use it.
:)
That, and the amount of time you don't spend on stuff you shouldn't have to spend time on.
If it adds up, then PC is for you. No biggie.
But for most people I know (that are below average technically able), they convert to Macs and rave about them afterwards
Stop the brainwash
...Microsoft should be afraid of all its competitors. Vista is so bad that they should be very afraid. Too many of its features go against what users want and slow the OS down in the process (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/27/03 8227&from=rss).
Anyone who claims Vista is faster is either lying or barely using their computer's power. As a developer, I beat the hell out of machines, and Vista is terribly slow compared to XP. On a laptop, it is unbearable (much slower, lower battery life, crashes on suspend or hibernate).
If Microsoft tries to force users to upgrade to Vista, I will switch to anything else. I like XP, but I don't think I'll be switching to Vista (even after a few service packs).
Time and time again I hear about how BMW is making record profits, yet their market share never raises. I don't see how BMW is going to compete with the likes of GM. GM is the worlds largest producer of automobiles.
Despite being profitable BMW should try a different tactic.
Why not just run XP?
I know the deed is done. But why did you spend the money on ANOTHER laptop? You could have just formatted OS X off of the drive and run XP. (Un) Surprisingly Apple writes some awesome drivers for XP (from what I've seen in the few times I've had to dual boot). Everything I've tried works great: camera, two finger scrolling, etc.
I don't understand why everyone is always obsessed with Apple's (or anyone's) market share. Apple isn't in the market share business, they are in the making money business. Sure your market share needs to be bigger than zero to make money, but Apple has been doing just fine with the few percent they have. Better than fine, actually - 700% gain in 5 years (3 years, really - the first 2 were net flat) is nothing to shake a stick at. Seems like Apple currently has both better marketing and a better business model for their shareholders.
Still trying to think of a clever sig...
Well, you might be attributing too much to the gaming market as well. Don't get me wrong, it's a big market and people who buy gaming rigs tend to push the bleeding edge of hardware. For some of us old folks, gaming on a PC has absolutely no interest whatsoever. A lot of people don't need the bleeding edge of hardware -- they need decent software that's easy to use.
In my opinion, Apples are coming bundled with a lot more software which is relevant to what people want to do. Handling your digital photos, movies, e-mail, and some light productivity software is probably what a lot of people want. I've been waiting got the right time to add a Mac Mini to my network -- it doesn't need to be huge, it can share disk space with the other critters on my network. But, I want the OS and the apps that come with it. I'm willing to pay a premium for that 'underpowered' machine.
I can't even fathom what you're doing with your machine. And, it is certainly not representative of what I and loads of other people do with out home machines.
I think Mac is currently in the midst of breaking into the market in serious quantity. The fact that this thread exists tells me it is.
I think you might also be missing what older people are willing to pay for a machine which doesn't give them troubles. Old ladies routinely seem to buy Cadillacs, because that's what their husband always bought and they like them. If I had an old grandma who wanted a computer and could afford to put up the cash, I'd absolutely steer her towards a Mac -- because it won't contribute to er early demise with all of the frustration.
You are a developer, and probably a gamer. But, you're also not representative of the rest of the consumer market for computers. I'm a developer at work -- but at home, I'm a light casual user who doesn't really tax his machines all that much: my XP box running at equivelant to around 2.8 GHz (AMD CPU) with 1GB of RAM is more than I've ever needed at home. My even slower FreeBSD box with 768 MB of RAM is just as zippy. I would personally never spend $2k on a machine (my last few have been less than $500 CDN), but I might be willing to go up a couple of price points for a Mac.
The whole point of this thread is that for a lot of people, the Mac offers a very attractive alternative to a Windows machine. For the people who really will do some web surfing, mail, a little light word processing, and handling all of this new-fangled digital media they still don't quite understand, the Mac is an exceptionally good choice.
Well, considering the revenues Apple has been pulling down (even if you discount the revenue from iTMS), and considering entire Universities are announcing they're going all Mac, I think you might find yourself wrong on that statement. Apple has been in 'real' businesses for a few decades now.
Apple aren't trying to supplant Microsoft as the dominant operating system. They're trying to make a niche for themselves of people who want something a little different out of their machines. Personally, that hipster marketing campaign makes me really wish I had one. There will always be a market for the big, honking PC rigs. But, there will always be a market for what Apple is selling as well.
You are entitled to your own opinion. Cancel or allow.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And regarding multimedia software and editing - you would not believe the difference! For professionals and amateurs alike working with video, photos and sound the Mac beats everything out there. Do you know anyone in the industry at all?Absolutely not! Even with comparable Intel C2D + 2GB of RAM my MBP boots way faster than any of my Windows PCs! And I keep them mean and lean.
On the other hand the Linux distributions I have tried have been much slow(er) to boot. But then again I never bothered to configure them properly.You mean like installing Linux on a Compaq? Or changing the hardware configuration on a Windows Vista PC? Besides most people on Macs don't need to hack anything - they just work. The hardcore gamers are all on their PCs anyway, let's just agree to disagree.
"No one will use a product at home that is not used in business without good reason. "
That statement is just dumb. I'm not going to even bother to respond to it.
"People forget that one of the biggest buyers of systems in the government, and we are always swapping hardware and shuffling systems around. At home I run a dual core 64 bit laptop, and it's barely up to par, but it's better then my friends MACBook Pro."
That's funny you feel that way. Not sure where you work, but where i am developers are jumping over each other to get Mac laptops or pro stations and a few have even paid for them out of their pocket.
It's funny you bag on Mac hardware (which is fine) but at the end by this statement I can see why you say that: "I run Linux at home and it's a headache going between XP and Ubuntu, but it's worth it because it's free and stable." I don't think you know elegance and design if it walked up to you and gave you a donkey-punch.
"It's just not feasible to use Java to do something when I know it will be slower and require more overhead then C++, Pearl, or
As far as Java and slow, nobody in their right mind would say that Java on Desktop is great, but there is nothing wrong with running it on the server. Web pages will run just as fast w/Java as they do with C# and if your writing web apps in C++ I question the credibility of your opinion. You made comment of your development starting to move web based, our development has been web based since 98 and we have worked with Perl/PHP then moved onto Java about 6 years ago.
Now we're making the same transition again from Java to Ruby on Rails. We've launched our second large scale RoR based project, the productivity of our programmers has more than doubled moving from Java to RoR with the only expense being slightly slower runtime (which for our application and requirements isn't a big deal, we're not Yahoo or Google). Anyone who's actually making decisions based on $ will see really quickly that the real expense is the dumb-ass programmer that's being paid $100k to write web applications in C++ when they can be done in 1/20th the amount of time with the right tools.
As a matter of fact, as a business the level of rapid deployment we can do now having improved our framework has given us new oppurtunity for growth into services we in the past had to leave alone due to lack of developer resources.
I can buy 4 dell 850 rack (XEON's with 2 gigs ram) servers for the LESS than the cost of 4 weeks of one of our engineers, a productive software stack for development so far outweighs the cost of hardware I can't imagine that anyone even brings it up anymore for run of the mill business-solution web-based applications.
Enjoy your C++ web development
I don't think crushing Microsoft is part the business plan. Let's put aside Apple's consumer electronics push as symbolized by the dropping of "Computer" from the company name for a moment. First, Apple can happily double its market share off the switchers disgruntled with Microsoft woeful security issues or its convoluted and belated Vista solution. Apple would not rule the market but it would show growth and delight investors. Second, Apple has not or does it show any intention of partnering with the other big OEMs to offer OSX with their desktops. Moreover, they show no signs of switching the kernel to Linux to take advantage of the pool of OS drivers necessary for releasing Leopard in the wild. They are not including a win32 compatibilty layer, releasing a fully feature office suite, making a concerted push into enterprise computing, or doing any other action to throw down with Microsoft. Lets not forget that Microsoft can afford to screw up for a long time before there is any appreciable exodus. Thus, I don't the see logic behind any assertion of the end of Microsoft dominance but I understand the sentiment. Microsoft has woefully proven it does not deserve to be the de facto desktop standard and Apple arguably does have a better OS. But, all the posting on slashdot will never change the status quo.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one