Re: Once Again For Your Posting Pleasure - John C. Dvorak Comments On MacOS X
- From: "-hh" <recscuba_google@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 19 Apr 2006 03:16:35 -0700
Addle Jones wrote:
Dvorak has also recently theorized that Microsoft is
in trouble:
They are, but Dvorak missed the mark.
Microsoft is "in trouble" because the barrier to entry into Vista is
too high for many of the x86 users: they have to buy at least the OS,
and IIRC, roughly half of them need to buy new hardware too. That
hurts MS's revenue streams.
But the barrier to entry into Mac OS X for an x86 user isn't zero
either: assuming that support was provided, they still would have to
buy a legal copy of the OS (and many will simply pirate it), and they
might have hardware support issues too.
So what's a PC user to do?
What Dvorak missed is the simple "do nothing" option. They can just
keep using 98 or ME or XP with their existing applications, and this
costs them absolutely nothing. Its hard to compete against Free.
Dvorak's PC paradigm is so 1980's, where people upgraded every 2 years
because power doubled and more power was still highly useful. But
purchasing rates have slowed because there's "enough" power for most
people: for browsing the internet, reading email and lightweight
MS-Office tasks, anything more than a ~1.5GHz CPU for these kinds of
tasks is overkill.
What all of this really means is that Vista needs a 'killer app' in
order to motivate people laying out the money for it (and more so
consumers instead of business). So what's this new killer app? For
example, if its going to be entertainment media, then Apple's already
in front with an 80% market share (and on both OS's) without needing
Vista, so that's not likely to be it. Similarly, its not likely that
its going to be a Game Box either, particularly since that market is
"PS2 vs. XBOX vs. GameCube".
PC's have become much more like cars in that the rate of change is now
much lower, and that virtually any one will do, but there are those who
prefer Detroit Iron and those that prefer Foreign, often due to some
qualitative preference. Regardless of which is chosen, most of them
will run for ten years or 100,000 miles.
....and when it comes to putting new life into an old car (OS X into
existing x86 PC), the practical viability of Apple going Open Source is
as improbable as finding a Mechanic who's willing to give away free
parts and services.
-hh
.
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