Re: Apple's poor positioning for the age *after* x86

In article <1126672192.400206.177220@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
imouttahere@xxxxxxx wrote:

> GreyCloud wrote:
> > Daniel Johnson wrote:
> > >
> > > They do some of the fundamental things right, then ploddingly fix the
> > > problems and keep improving the product until the hardware has caught
> > > up. Then they take over the world. :D
> >
> > Wishful thinking.
>
> MS-DOS, Windows, Excel. Word. Visual C. DirectX. That's what made MSFT
> a $300B company, in the same rarified class as GE & Exxon.
>
> Now, MSFT could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn't miss anything they've
> innovated, other than the optical mouse w/ scrollwheel, but to deny
> that MSFT has taken over the computer world is perverse.
>
> MSFT's been pretty flat these past five years, but the next xbox looks
> to be a solid platform, they're going to have good integration with it
> and desktop gaming. I said it 3 years ago:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac.advocacy/msg/f561a95d45fc0e92?hl=e
> n&
>
> and I'll say it again, MSFT vs. everyone looks to me to look like the
> first scene of Star Wars, where the imperial troops in ballistic armor
> slaughter the ragtag rebel troops dressed in suede.

Read this article:
http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2005/09/12/microsoft-management-sof
tware_cz_vm_0913microsoft.html

You might not be so enthusiastic about Microsoft's prospects.

> Apple's been reasonably nimble these past 5 years with the iPod and the
> juice from getting OPENSTEP ported to the Mac, but the question is
> whether or not Apple has shot its bolt, and how well the next round of
> OS wars are going to go.
>
> Vista and 10.4.5 just might look startingly identical, on the same
> hardware. There may or may not be an Apple value proposition in a year
> or two, once their Mac hardware division is liquidated.

Vista is already a train wreck. It's years late. It has been scaled back
repeatedly. It's now mostly a warmed-over XP with a new graphics engine
and desktop search. Early indications are that Microsoft still doesn't
quite get UI.

By the time it actually ships, it could well be going up against
Leopard, not Tiger.

On Intel, Apple will still benefit from its superior hardware/software
integration, its first-rate industrial design, and its increasingly
valuable consumer brand. A lot of the interesting things Apple has done
over the last few years have nothing to do with NeXT technology --
Bonjour, AirPort, Spotlight, iTunes + iPod, Core Image, etc. so there's
no particular reason to believe Apple has basically been coasting on
NeXT's innovation, and is going to stall out shortly.

Trends toward open standards will continue to undermine some of the
major barriers to entry which have allowed Microsoft to maintain its
market position. In particular, the Open Document format is probably the
biggest threat Office has faced in years, and open platforms for
building rich "Web 2.0" applications are a serious danger to Microsoft's
API hegemony, particularly since Microsoft is trying to encourage an API
switch -- developers might decide that if they're going to switch
anyway, it might be a good time to get out from under Microsoft's thumb.

Meanwhile, Microsoft seems to have lost focus. They're chasing after
set-top boxes, cell phones, palm tops, game consoles, web properties,
online services, etc. while their desktop platform stagnates. According
to the article above, they're turning into a bureaucratic dinosaur. They
seem to have lost the discipline to actually ship new products on a
reasonable schedules.

As a company, they've become more and more customer-hostile, while the
rest of the industry has moved in the opposite direction. They've sued
school districts, demanding that they prove they own all their copies of
Windows. They've restructured corporate pricing to try to force
corporations onto their upgrade cycle. They've promoted product
activation and insane DRM schemes that would, for instance, degrade the
quality of video output for consumers who didn't buy new monitors.
They're even running a new series of ads labeling their customers as
dinosaurs -- the intent is clearly to try to spur upgrades, but that's
really not how things come across.


What's important to understand about Microsoft is that much of the value
of its major products is not inherent in the products themselves, but
comes, rather, from the position they hold in the market.

As Jobs pointed out in the recent Time article -- and I've pointed out
here in the past -- Apple's approach to the iPod, in terms of design
goals, market positioning, etc. is much the same as its approach to the
Mac. In the monopolized desktop computer market, that approach gets
Apple 4%. In the more open music player market, it gets Apple over 70%.

A similar analogy could be drawn between Linux and Apache. Why is Apache
so much more successful than Linux? In large part, it's probably because
the web server market isn't monopolized, and the OS market is.

This, of course, raises the question of just what happens if Microsoft
loses its monopoly status -- which, every year, is increasingly held up
by psychological factors ("Everyone knows everyone uses Windows!") than
technological or business barriers. Jobs commented on a "glass ceiling"
at about 5% for alternative operating systems. Glass can shatter. Once
alternatives are accepted by the mainstream, Microsoft's fall could come
fast.

--
"It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get
them out of harm's way."
-- George W. Bush in Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: A Good Read from Rob Enderle
    ... shear ignorance of the PC Market. ... I'm writing this from the Microsoft ... I realized that for all Apple's ... I figured it would be fun to contrast Steve Jobs ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • A Good Read from Rob Enderle
    ... shear ignorance of the PC Market. ... I'm writing this from the Microsoft ... I realized that for all Apple's ... I figured it would be fun to contrast Steve Jobs ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Apples poor positioning for the age *after* x86
    ... There may or may not be an Apple value proposition in a year ... once their Mac hardware division is liquidated. ... > Early indications are that Microsoft still doesn't quite get UI. ... > comes, rather, from the position they hold in the market. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: WHY
    ... Microsoft sells software to make people's lives wonderful?! ... sells software to make money, as much as they can for as little development ... I believe MSFT still licenses a lot of IBM patents. ... anything against the mainframe market. ...
    (microsoft.public.excel)
  • Re: Why Apple Isnšt Microsoft
    ... Why Apple Isn¹t Microsoft ... As Apple continues to grow a lot faster than most people ever expected, ... which hold serious majorities in market share. ... in the digital media player market against the iPod, ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)