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How Sony, Intel, and Unix Made Apple's Mac a PC Competitor

Posted by samzenpus on from the back-in-the-day dept.

smaxp writes In 2007, Sony's supply chain lessons, the network effect from the shift to Intel architecture, and a better OS X for developers combined to renew the Mac's growth. The network effects of the Microsoft Wintel ecosystem that Rappaport explained 20 years ago in the Harvard Business Review are no longer a big advantage. By turning itself into a premium PC company with a proprietary OS, Apple has taken the best of PC ecosystem, but avoided taking on the disadvantages.

5 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. It helps to actually use the thing. by jedidiah · · Score: -1, Troll

    > Apple has taken the best of PC ecosystem, but avoided taking on the disadvantages.

    This is such a joke. It's simply not true. WinDOS still has the "ecosystem" advantage. It's sad but true. What Apple has is perception driven by good marketing and IGNORANCE.

    Macs are a mythical product that most people are unfamiliar with because the whole platform has a high barrier to entry. There are very few people in a good position to comment on Macs. You have to spend a great deal of money and have already swallowed all the Kool-Aid.

    I bought into the myth too myself before a had a Mac to play around with.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    1. Re:It helps to actually use the thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      Agreed. It *seems* like a unix box on good quality great looking hardware. But it's not. It's crippled unix box very unlike Linux. A typical debian distro is way more useful for development work than a Mac.

  2. Re:Being different was a boat anchor. by lucm · · Score: -1, Troll

    So they fixed their own bad design. That's hardly "taking the best of PC ecosystem, but avoided taking on the disadvantages".

    The Macbook product line is terrible. Looking at these specifications, can you tell if this is the latest Macbook Air or an entry-level Acer laptop from 2011?

    1440x900
    128GB SSD
    Dual-core i5 1.4 GHz
    4GB DDR3
    Intel HD 5000

    A total joke.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  3. Re:Apple Hate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Just pointing out that every argument against Apple seems to break down to the cost. I'm looking for the best computer. I use it every day, it's my primary source of income. I don't mind paying extra to get a better machine. That is exactly what Apple makes, and every reviewer agrees. Apple laptops top every comparison chart. They are certainly in a league of their own when it comes to build quality. I really don't understand this irrational hatred towards a computer manufacturer. I can only explain the vitriol towards Apple products as some sort of jealously. I don't go around calling Asus owners "clueless rubes" because they didn't make the same purchasing decision as I did.

  4. OSX is a hammer without a handle by Mr_Wisenheimer · · Score: -1, Troll

    Sure, a hammer without a handle can, with enough work, do pretty much any job a proper hammer can do, but it is a pain in the tukis. And, you can always take the time to build a proper handle for the broken hammer, at which point the tool is no longer crippled, but that does not change the fact that you were given the hammer in a crippled state.

    OS-X as Unix is a similar situation. Given enough work, you can get tools designed for Unix to run on any system, including Windows. The question is, how much trouble do you want to go through? Compared to Linux, Mac package managers for Unix-like tools are pretty pathetic. They are difficult to install, difficult to use, and even when they do work, they are cumbersome.

    Take my experience installing a simple program, the KDE text editor KATE.

    KDE provides binary installation packages for Windows. Getting them installed and getting Kate up and running was relatively painless. You did not even need to install a Unix-like environment such as CYGWIN.

    On Ubuntu, you can install KATE with a simple "apt-get install" command. All the dependencies are correctly handled and the program just works.

    On OS-X, getting FINK running took at least an hour. It took hours to figure out how to properly install KATE (unlike Windows and Linux, the dependencies were not handled automatically). Then, once I finally got everything downloaded, it took hours to build on a 12-core system. After building, it still did not work. After several more hours Googling to figure out why, I just gave up and suggested getting rid of OS-X and installing Linux or Windows.

    OS-X is a hammer without a handle. It technically still is Unix, just like a hammer-head technically is a hammer. It is just badly crippled and requires inordinate amounts of research, trial and error, or experience to use as a proper Unix box.