I could tell who the author of this atricle was just by reading the title. Maybe I need to spend less time in the "computer world".
So when you see an article that places Apple in a positive light, explaining why Apple is still around and still greatly influencing the digital marketplace you immediately assume it’s more fake news from the author? Only articles critical of Apple or predictive of gloom and doom for the company are valid and newsworthy? Editorials like this are simply fanboy fantasies?
It has nothing to do with being a fan boy, it is about being gullible. People see these long wordy article and for what ever reason take them as the absolute truth. Rather they represent a perspective just like any other article and requires the reader to consider the veracity of the points offered. For whatever reason many take DED’s writing style book line and sinker.
The interesting thing here is that this is perhaps one of DEDs better write ups in that it is largely reflective of history with few distortions. Well as far as I got in the article, I really have trouble with this sort of writing. It is in the same style as the garbage seen on many conspiracy theory sites that use misleading language to get points across.
In a nut shell DED reminds me too much of the writing seen on those conspiracy theory sites and as such is repulsive. Consider what you would think of people that keep flooding you with links to these sites. Would you consider them well informed or gullible and stupid? Frankly when I see people praise these articles, in absolute glowing manner, I loose all respect for them as intelligent creatures. Maybe this is the result of being around since the first personal computers came out and seeing some of this first hand. The reality is that there are many explanations for the failure of almost every competitor to Windows. Believe it or not many companies where simply mismanaged or otherwise shot themselves in the foot.
Sounds like neckbeard sour grapes after reading how it really is.
Tesla is also like Apple selling tightly integrated software with premium hardware, while eschewing useless buttons, knobs, and dashboards in favor of a simple user interface. Tesla is the Apple of automobiles, so much so that I wonder why Apple itself is tip-toeing into the market. Although usually Apple enters a market later than established players, it does so with innovation that shows what the high-volume crowd missed entirely. What could Apple think that Tesla possibly is doing wrong? Maybe the car market is so vast that there can be multiple luxury vendors, or several mass market near-luxury-but-innovative participants.
Apple understands computers, not cars. Tesla understands computers and cars.
Only in that every major industry and auto maker understands and utilizes computing. Doesn’t mean they know a darn thing about consumer computing. Where’s their laptop?
Theres little arcane or special about building cars.
Apple understands computers, not cars. Tesla understands computers and cars.
Tesla understands how to mesmerize shareholders. ____________
Although AAPL took much longer to get to a 50B market cap (somewhere in 2005), Tesla's valuation includes other ventures in the green energy business. As for market caps, if I'm mesmerized by a 10-bagger with TSLA, I must be even more mesmerized by a 30X purchase increment with my AAPL shares.
If you just go by P/E ratio as a simple metric, outfits like Google or Facebook which sell advertising, or an Amazon balancing what is generally perceived as a low-margin business, also have mesmerized their shareholders.
Oh yes, I must further state my bias that in addition to the shares, I use both Apple and Tesla equipment, so am a happy camper even if saying these things reveal a potential conflict-of-interest.
Windows won in part because of Microsoft's, shall we say. shrewd, dealings with IBM and other manufacturers.
By keeping the rights to DOS, and then by getting contracts that got them paid FOR EVERY PC A MANUFACTURER MADE, REGARDLESS OF OS, Microsoft basically closed the market for competing Wintel OSes for PC cloners.
Then bake in the economies of scale drive by an 'open' (thanks to COMPAQ's lead) architecture, and the explosion of Wintel was inevitable. As stated, a cloning economy for MacOS was wrong from the start. Apple needed to change the game, which they did starting with the iPod, then iTMS, then iMAC...and the rest is history,
Just remember, Android may gave 95% unit share of the phone market, but Apple has 95% profit share. Which would you rather have?
And Apple's share of the smartphone market in actual units is very significant. Significant enough to drive very large amounts of $$$$ its way from phone purchases and now from services. It is way beyond niche. It is a major critical mass of users.
Tesla is also like Apple selling tightly integrated software with premium hardware, while eschewing useless buttons, knobs, and dashboards in favor of a simple user interface. Tesla is the Apple of automobiles, so much so that I wonder why Apple itself is tip-toeing into the market. Although usually Apple enters a market later than established players, it does so with innovation that shows what the high-volume crowd missed entirely. What could Apple think that Tesla possibly is doing wrong? Maybe the car market is so vast that there can be multiple luxury vendors, or several mass market near-luxury-but-innovative participants.
Apple understands computers, not cars. Tesla understands computers and cars.
Meh, Tesla doesn't understand car manufacturing very well at all, and that will likely be its downfall, and frankly, there are in fact better EV's from the traditional manufacturers out, or on the way.
What Elon does understand is how to milk subsidies, which are being phased out worldwide, and how to make himself the cult figure that he is today with his outlandish statements.
Since no auto manufacturer can touch what he has done and is doing despite pouring billions of $ into it, he is either very lucky or very good. I suspect its the latter.
I am glad to report that I have never owned or purchased a windows computer, laptop or anything windows in my entire life, and I never will.
I never had to. I'm not a 9 to 5 desk jockey, and in the creative field, I get to use what I want.
I on the other hand was business oriented. IBM PCs (and later Windows) were pretty much required. Not only did they have the software needed for business but they interfaced better and more extensively with the IBM mainframes.
But, in 1986 we got the new Macintoshes and they were great at doing proposals and diagrams. It took a long time till Windows could match them.
But, frankly, neither could touch IBM's OS2. It was light years ahead of both. Unfortunately it required hardware that light years ahead to drive it. One of its most unique and valuable features was that it separated the software from the data and never mixed the two - a concept that neither Apple nor Microsoft ever grasped. That gave it huge advantages -- particularly in stability and security.
Windows won in part because of Microsoft's, shall we say. shrewd, dealings with IBM and other manufacturers.
By keeping the rights to DOS, and then by getting contracts that got them paid FOR EVERY PC A MANUFACTURER MADE, REGARDLESS OF OS, Microsoft basically closed the market for competing Wintel OSes for PC cloners.
Then bake in the economies of scale drive by an 'open' (thanks to COMPAQ's lead) architecture, and the explosion of Wintel was inevitable. As stated, a cloning economy for MacOS was wrong from the start. Apple needed to change the game, which they did starting with the iPod, then iTMS, then iMAC...and the rest is history,
Just remember, Android may gave 95% unit share of the phone market, but Apple has 95% profit share. Which would you rather have?
Very true. Bill Gates wasn't a technological genius, he was a marketing and business genius.
But, you really can't compare Android profit to Apple's because the purpose of Android is to collect your private data and funnel it to Google -- just like they will soon be doing with those millions of FitBits out there: They will know whether you're a runner, walker, cyclist, weight lifter or coach potato and market your data accordingly.
Windows has proven long ago that the main dimension for product differentiation in computing devices is the OS not hardware. Meaning a mass market for 'high end' Windows machines can never be sustained as long as dirt-cheap good-enough Windows machines are available. Even people who can afford it will pick the low cost machines because the pace of technological change is so fast, who would want to spend a lot of money on a machine that will be outdated in 3 years?
The seminal case is Northgate Computers who started selling DOS-Windows machines using high end components and materials in 1987 and was filing for Chapter 11 by 1994. Steve Jobs knew this so the one of the first things he did when he regained control of Apple was to kill Apple's licensing program. The idea that the clones would sell to the low end Mac market while Apple reserved the high end of the market for itself was just sheer stupidity. High end Macs will not sell as long as dirt-cheap clones are available.
Fast forward to Google and Android. When it first came out, I predicted that the same dynamic will apply and there will be no sustainable market for high-end Android phones. I also predicted that Android will be the phone OS of choice in the third world. 2 out of 2. Not that I was going out on a limb with those predictions.
The amazing thing is that Google thought that Android phones would not repeat the pattern shown by Windows computers. So much for hiring Ivy League economics professors to advise them.
Actually Apple has found a workaround against your (perfectly sound) reasoning, by selling simultaneous generations of iPhones, some of them at very competitive price. But the trick is of course that it is not "high end" versus "low end", but "recent" versus "not so recent (but which used to be an high end, not so long ago, though !)" ......
Yes, excellent point! I guess I should amend my argument to read "A mass market for 'high end' Windows machines can never be sustained as long as dirt-cheap good-enough Windows machines **can be offered by the competition**."
I have faith that Apple is not so stupid as to offer a 'middle-end' (I don't think $399 is a low-end price for smart phones) iPhone with a combination of features and price so attractive that it would kill the demand for their top-of-the-line models. But they're only able to do this type of market segmentation because no one else can sell iOS phones.
Yet even with Apple including Safari webbrowser to their iOS and macOS platforms, allegedly installed on more than 1.5 billion devices, its marketshare is a paltry 5.1%. Google's Chrome is on 72.4%, and people actually need to go online, download and install it. Somethings up, and it's not Apple's marketshare.
Marketshare of software is difficult to judge. Trying to gather info online even more so. I worked on several internet games that had 'marketshare' numbers that showed they were HUGE, HUGE I tell you. We all knew that wasn't true. That being said, does marketshare matter that much in this case? I've never understood that POV. Do people not buy Fords because more people buy Chevy (or whatever that market is). Marketshare is ONE metric that is often not the most important metric. More often than not it's subjective. If you and I each own a computer. Me a Dell and you an iMac and I work online and am online all day and you use your iMac a few times a week, does that matter? Or I use a PC at work and a Mac at home. What does that metric tell us? Profits seem to be more important and marketshare in a granular form might be more helpful. But it's not cut and dry.
It's definitely not cut and dry. Still, it seemed like a huge difference, but others have pointed out to me that I sourced from desktop browser marketshare. That was stupid, obviously.
You make a good point, I guess these numbers ought to include 'online time' or something to be comparable.
Nothing to argue against in there, aside from the length and the compulsion to do free marketing for the company who’s products are the core news topic of this site.
One thing that is absent from the article is the statement of fact about dominant-positioned companies becoming complacent ALSO includes Apple. Apple was complacent and slow to advance Classic Mac OS, which handed the win to Microsoft (it wasn’t just their anticompetitive business practices).
Once again, Apple is behaving the same way: several products are priced continuously higher without an actual value proposition to match, some products that were staples of consumer satisfaction are gutted or dropped (iWork was gutted, Aperture and AirPort discontinued, and I’d offer the argument that iPhone’s usability was gutted at iOS 7’s GUI reskin, but the majority of Apple fanatics would rather support anti-intellectualism and slam GUI design specialists as “arrogant know it alls” than accept that there’s actual science to GUI design).
Some products are having their market potential reduced to a tiny fraction of their original scope by being priced into the realm of impossible access for most of the customers who used to buy them (Mac Pro). The iPhone isn’t far behind. Aiming for luxury sales is self destructive when luxury is far more fad driven than value driven.
Worst of all is the complacency with iOS releases, where pushing out questionable-value new bullet-point features is prioritized over fixing existing bugs (while introducing new ones). I’ve listed the bugs here on countless occasions, most of which were introduced by iOS 7 and still not fixed as of iOS 12 (I’m still waiting on 13, but I have zero trust in it “being the one”). iOS developers are continuing to be pushed around by iOS API changes at excessive speed, causing 3rd-party apps to be abandoned because it apparently costs them too much to maintain existing apps.
iOS isn’t quite as flaky as Droid variants that I still witness here and there, but it’s also not as accessible or consistent (or reliable) as it used to be. iCloud-relying cross-platform services don’t work half the time (Reminder statuses are never synched any more between my devices, and Universal Clipboard has not worked for me beyond the first few months of the feature being extant).
Compared to when iPhone won its dominance via being the superior product, it has lost considerable ground in these areas, and Apple seem utterly unaware or to not care at all (as to be expected under an MBA-type leadership, focusing on Wall Street, rather than excellence). iPhones aren’t superior any more; they’re simply the less irritating choice compared to the competition.
Mac OS isn’t exactly doing brilliantly either. Each release causes regressions in daily functionality (I see this with Finder and Quicklook all the time, as well as basic performance decreases). The last time it was properly optimized was Snow Leopard, which was really just a positive side-effect of optimizing the core OS to run on the then-new (and extremely constrained hardware) iPhone. That needs to be done again, on all of Apple’s now fragmented platforms.
The biggest threat to any dominant company is its own success.
Still with the iOS 7 bullshit. It's been six years, get over it. Nobody believes you're a "GUI design specialist". As Tyler Durden said, "sticking feathers in your butt does not make you a chicken."
People who can't afford the Mac Pro ARE NOT THE TARGET MARKET FOR THAT PRODUCT. I don't know how many different ways people have to tell you that.
Everyone can afford an iPhone of some sort, at some level. I'm sure Apple's super worried about the "market potential" or "losing ground" of the most successful product in the history of the world being reduced because the high end is too expensive for some people. They literally can't make the high end iPhones fast enough to keep up with demand.
Aside from the odd bug here and there, I literally do not share your perceived experience with regard to bugs or flakiness or whatever.
And anyone still clinging to Snow Leopard as the bastion of Apple software engineering is living in fantasy land. The world has moved the fuck on.
Nothing to argue against in there, aside from the length and the compulsion to do free marketing for the company who’s products are the core news topic of this site.
One thing that is absent from the article is the statement of fact about dominant-positioned companies becoming complacent ALSO includes Apple. Apple was complacent and slow to advance Classic Mac OS, which handed the win to Microsoft (it wasn’t just their anticompetitive business practices).
Once again, Apple is behaving the same way: several products are priced continuously higher without an actual value proposition to match, some products that were staples of consumer satisfaction are gutted or dropped (iWork was gutted, Aperture and AirPort discontinued, and I’d offer the argument that iPhone’s usability was gutted at iOS 7’s GUI reskin, but the majority of Apple fanatics would rather support anti-intellectualism and slam GUI design specialists as “arrogant know it alls” than accept that there’s actual science to GUI design).
Some products are having their market potential reduced to a tiny fraction of their original scope by being priced into the realm of impossible access for most of the customers who used to buy them (Mac Pro). The iPhone isn’t far behind. Aiming for luxury sales is self destructive when luxury is far more fad driven than value driven.
Worst of all is the complacency with iOS releases, where pushing out questionable-value new bullet-point features is prioritized over fixing existing bugs (while introducing new ones). I’ve listed the bugs here on countless occasions, most of which were introduced by iOS 7 and still not fixed as of iOS 12 (I’m still waiting on 13, but I have zero trust in it “being the one”). iOS developers are continuing to be pushed around by iOS API changes at excessive speed, causing 3rd-party apps to be abandoned because it apparently costs them too much to maintain existing apps.
iOS isn’t quite as flaky as Droid variants that I still witness here and there, but it’s also not as accessible or consistent (or reliable) as it used to be. iCloud-relying cross-platform services don’t work half the time (Reminder statuses are never synched any more between my devices, and Universal Clipboard has not worked for me beyond the first few months of the feature being extant).
Compared to when iPhone won its dominance via being the superior product, it has lost considerable ground in these areas, and Apple seem utterly unaware or to not care at all (as to be expected under an MBA-type leadership, focusing on Wall Street, rather than excellence). iPhones aren’t superior any more; they’re simply the less irritating choice compared to the competition.
Mac OS isn’t exactly doing brilliantly either. Each release causes regressions in daily functionality (I see this with Finder and Quicklook all the time, as well as basic performance decreases). The last time it was properly optimized was Snow Leopard, which was really just a positive side-effect of optimizing the core OS to run on the then-new (and extremely constrained hardware) iPhone. That needs to be done again, on all of Apple’s now fragmented platforms.
The biggest threat to any dominant company is its own success.
It’s your opinion. I myself don’t see that happening to the extent your describing. Yes, I’ve seen Apple trip up some iOS/MacOS issues over the years but for the most part have been pretty good given the complexity of what they’re doing.
When will this “complexity” excuse finally die and software (all over the industry) be seen as the fundamentally broken thing it is?
Nice for a change to read an almost objective view of how the OS wars was played out. You get really tired of reading all the very subjective articles in tech all the time. It seems that all these tech journalists can't stay objective even though it is the most important part of journalism.
nice read - looking forward to the next article
if Bill Gates didn;t give Apple a handout, Apple would have been dead log ago.
Microsft was required to prop up Apple so the ftc doesn't come down on Microsoft and break up the company for being a monopoly.
Wait, what?
When Steve Jobs returned from exile to lead Apple, he cut a deal with Gates. Microsoft invested in Apple and introduced the Office suite on the MacOS platform, agreeing to support it for at least five years. (Jobs also discontinued licensing of MacOS on third-party hardware, something introduced by the lunkheads who had been running Apple in Jobs’ absence.)
At the time, Microsoft was defending against legal and PR issues stemming from the browser wars of the time, so benevolence towards a hobbled competitor was of significant benefit. They also could use the Mac platform to tinker with Office without upsetting their more staid Windows customers.
Nothing to argue against in there, aside from the length and the compulsion to do free marketing for the company who’s products are the core news topic of this site.
One thing that is absent from the article is the statement of fact about dominant-positioned companies becoming complacent ALSO includes Apple. Apple was complacent and slow to advance Classic Mac OS, which handed the win to Microsoft (it wasn’t just their anticompetitive business practices).
Once again, Apple is behaving the same way: several products are priced continuously higher without an actual value proposition to match, some products that were staples of consumer satisfaction are gutted or dropped (iWork was gutted, Aperture and AirPort discontinued, and I’d offer the argument that iPhone’s usability was gutted at iOS 7’s GUI reskin, but the majority of Apple fanatics would rather support anti-intellectualism and slam GUI design specialists as “arrogant know it alls” than accept that there’s actual science to GUI design).
Some products are having their market potential reduced to a tiny fraction of their original scope by being priced into the realm of impossible access for most of the customers who used to buy them (Mac Pro). The iPhone isn’t far behind. Aiming for luxury sales is self destructive when luxury is far more fad driven than value driven.
Worst of all is the complacency with iOS releases, where pushing out questionable-value new bullet-point features is prioritized over fixing existing bugs (while introducing new ones). I’ve listed the bugs here on countless occasions, most of which were introduced by iOS 7 and still not fixed as of iOS 12 (I’m still waiting on 13, but I have zero trust in it “being the one”). iOS developers are continuing to be pushed around by iOS API changes at excessive speed, causing 3rd-party apps to be abandoned because it apparently costs them too much to maintain existing apps.
iOS isn’t quite as flaky as Droid variants that I still witness here and there, but it’s also not as accessible or consistent (or reliable) as it used to be. iCloud-relying cross-platform services don’t work half the time (Reminder statuses are never synched any more between my devices, and Universal Clipboard has not worked for me beyond the first few months of the feature being extant).
Compared to when iPhone won its dominance via being the superior product, it has lost considerable ground in these areas, and Apple seem utterly unaware or to not care at all (as to be expected under an MBA-type leadership, focusing on Wall Street, rather than excellence). iPhones aren’t superior any more; they’re simply the less irritating choice compared to the competition.
Mac OS isn’t exactly doing brilliantly either. Each release causes regressions in daily functionality (I see this with Finder and Quicklook all the time, as well as basic performance decreases). The last time it was properly optimized was Snow Leopard, which was really just a positive side-effect of optimizing the core OS to run on the then-new (and extremely constrained hardware) iPhone. That needs to be done again, on all of Apple’s now fragmented platforms.
The biggest threat to any dominant company is its own success.
It’s your opinion. I myself don’t see that happening to the extent your describing. Yes, I’ve seen Apple trip up some iOS/MacOS issues over the years but for the most part have been pretty good given the complexity of what they’re doing.
When will this “complexity” excuse finally die and software (all over the industry) be seen as the fundamentally broken thing it is?
Probably about the time somebody figures out how to make software not be complicated. Don’t hold your breath.
Windows won in part because of Microsoft's, shall we say. shrewd, dealings with IBM and other manufacturers.
By keeping the rights to DOS, and then by getting contracts that got them paid FOR EVERY PC A MANUFACTURER MADE, REGARDLESS OF OS, Microsoft basically closed the market for competing Wintel OSes for PC cloners.
Then bake in the economies of scale drive by an 'open' (thanks to COMPAQ's lead) architecture, and the explosion of Wintel was inevitable. As stated, a cloning economy for MacOS was wrong from the start. Apple needed to change the game, which they did starting with the iPod, then iTMS, then iMAC...and the rest is history,
Just remember, Android may gave 95% unit share of the phone market, but Apple has 95% profit share. Which would you rather have?
But, you really can't compare Android profit to Apple's because the purpose of Android is to collect your private data and funnel it to Google -- just like they will soon be doing with those millions of FitBits out there: They will know whether you're a runner, walker, cyclist, weight lifter or coach potato and market your data accordingly.
How will they be marketing your health data? Honest question.
Windows won in part because of Microsoft's, shall we say. shrewd, dealings with IBM and other manufacturers.
By keeping the rights to DOS, and then by getting contracts that got them paid FOR EVERY PC A MANUFACTURER MADE, REGARDLESS OF OS, Microsoft basically closed the market for competing Wintel OSes for PC cloners.
Then bake in the economies of scale drive by an 'open' (thanks to COMPAQ's lead) architecture, and the explosion of Wintel was inevitable. As stated, a cloning economy for MacOS was wrong from the start. Apple needed to change the game, which they did starting with the iPod, then iTMS, then iMAC...and the rest is history,
Just remember, Android may gave 95% unit share of the phone market, but Apple has 95% profit share. Which would you rather have?
But, you really can't compare Android profit to Apple's because the purpose of Android is to collect your private data and funnel it to Google -- just like they will soon be doing with those millions of FitBits out there: They will know whether you're a runner, walker, cyclist, weight lifter or coach potato and market your data accordingly.
How will they be marketing your health data? Honest question.
By tailoring the advertising target market for drug companies, health insurers, health care providers, health food manufacturers, etc.
if Bill Gates didn;t give Apple a handout, Apple would have been dead log ago.
Microsft was required to prop up Apple so the ftc doesn't come down on Microsoft and break up the company for being a monopoly.
Wait, what?
Must be before your time.
Apple was facing backruptcy, this was before the iPhone came about. Apple had just 5% of the computer market and was purely for enthusiasts and graphic/design people. They were struggling financially and would have probably faced bankruptcy. MS would be forced to split into different companies by the compeition commision if Apple went under so Bill Gates essentially prop up the compeition to keep them in the game. They sold the shares after Apple bounce back a bit.
Comments
Only in that every major industry and auto maker understands and utilizes computing. Doesn’t mean they know a darn thing about consumer computing. Where’s their laptop?
Theres little arcane or special about building cars.
But, in 1986 we got the new Macintoshes and they were great at doing proposals and diagrams. It took a long time till Windows could match them.
But, frankly, neither could touch IBM's OS2. It was light years ahead of both. Unfortunately it required hardware that light years ahead to drive it. One of its most unique and valuable features was that it separated the software from the data and never mixed the two - a concept that neither Apple nor Microsoft ever grasped. That gave it huge advantages -- particularly in stability and security.
But, you really can't compare Android profit to Apple's because the purpose of Android is to collect your private data and funnel it to Google -- just like they will soon be doing with those millions of FitBits out there: They will know whether you're a runner, walker, cyclist, weight lifter or coach potato and market your data accordingly.
I have faith that Apple is not so stupid as to offer a 'middle-end' (I don't think $399 is a low-end price for smart phones) iPhone with a combination of features and price so attractive that it would kill the demand for their top-of-the-line models. But they're only able to do this type of market segmentation because no one else can sell iOS phones.
You make a good point, I guess these numbers ought to include 'online time' or something to be comparable.
People who can't afford the Mac Pro ARE NOT THE TARGET MARKET FOR THAT PRODUCT. I don't know how many different ways people have to tell you that.
Everyone can afford an iPhone of some sort, at some level. I'm sure Apple's super worried about the "market potential" or "losing ground" of the most successful product in the history of the world being reduced because the high end is too expensive for some people. They literally can't make the high end iPhones fast enough to keep up with demand.
Aside from the odd bug here and there, I literally do not share your perceived experience with regard to bugs or flakiness or whatever.
And anyone still clinging to Snow Leopard as the bastion of Apple software engineering is living in fantasy land. The world has moved the fuck on.
At the time, Microsoft was defending against legal and PR issues stemming from the browser wars of the time, so benevolence towards a hobbled competitor was of significant benefit. They also could use the Mac platform to tinker with Office without upsetting their more staid Windows customers.
Probably about the time somebody figures out how to make software not be complicated. Don’t hold your breath.