The number of permutations that would give Apple a $999 G5 tower are almost limitless. It is not and never has been a question of could they build it. It is a question of whether they can have that unit as a part of their overall offerings and maximize their revenue/profits.
Could Apple sell this $999 G5? Yes. How would it's design, manufacture and distribution affect the production of Mac minis, iMac G5s and Full Tower G5s? Would the addition of the $999 G5 microtower make minis and iMac G5s economically infeasible due to production line costs, design costs, etc?
If Apple were selling 20 million computers a year, instead of 1-2 million, the answers to those questions might be different. But Apple does not have the economies of scale that it WILL have when it moves to the Intel platform. Apple will inherit those economies for some of their internals.
All of this allegedly-saved money will have almost nothing to do with the feature set and pricing of the Mactels they manufacture - that will be determined by the bean counters.
I don't agree. The people who but iMacs, for the most part are not the people who would buy seperates. It's like audio. There are people who will only buy tuners, pre-amps, and power amps. Then there are those who would only buy recievers. There is some crossover, but not as much as you would think.
I'm sure that Apple would rather sell a $999 machine than one for $699.
Apple has been selling more computers than they ever have before. That's good. Now that they are being recognized by a greater public than ever before as well.
Most of that public consists of Windows users. They don't think the way you seem to. Some will go for the all-in-one, and some for the Mini, but many won't. Many want a mini tower, and they won't, or can't, pay $2,000 for it. Even $1,500 seems to be too much.
Even many people here, on this very site, would buy a $999 mini tower, if offered.
There is a big hole in their product line. That's obvious. PM sales have sunk to very low levels, about 125,000 sold last quarter.
Because Apple never overlooks anything, and never makes mistakes?
The people at Apple are human of course they make mistakes.
Quote:
For most of the time Apple has been in existence, their computers let people remove and replace most parts. This was never a problem before, why should it be now?
I think you are missing the philosophy of the iMac. Jobs' intention for the iMac is that the consumer does not need to deal with the computer. I know seven people who own the iMac G5. They don?t know much about computers, don?t have any desire or even care to know. All they want is for the thing to work.
Quote:
Or are you saying that what PC people say is true, that Mac people are too ignorant of their machines and so shouldn't be allowed to open them?
As I think of the people I know with computers, 90% have little to no understanding of how their computer works. Probably at least 75% don?t understand their computers full capability.
Quote:
How do you know that only a small minority of people want to get into their iMac?
Because most people never figured out how to get their VCR to stop flashing 12:00.
Quote:
Apple went and threw out all of the interior design that made the earlier models great, other than the form itself. No more user replaceable parts. No more easy VESA mount. No more two memory slots.
Come the PM G5. Where is the second external bay? Gone. Why? Don't we want one any more?
It's like removing the "start" button from the keyboard. I don't know of anyone who preferred NOT having that button.
Why can't a $3,300 PM have the same 4 or 5 USB2 ports that a $500 PC does?
These are all conscious choices mad by Apple. None of us here can say for sure why they made these choices. We can only speculate. I?m sure much of it is economics versus what the consumer will actually find useful.
I can agree with you on many of your complaints.
As expensive as the PowerMac we should have internal RAID at this point.
The start button on the keyboard. Who knows? I forgot it even used to be there.
From what I understand about the USB ports. In one sense yes it would be nice to have more. But on cheap commodity computers they are all on the same bus. So it becomes diminishing returns if you actually ever use all of them. I could see Apple making the argument that?s a reason why not to have so many.
Quote:
Most of that public consists of Windows users. They don't think the way you seem to. Some will go for the all-in-one, and some for the Mini, but many won't.
I agree Apple needs to develop a $999 mini tower. I?m sure they will.
The large majority of PC owners I know don?t know much difference between tower size. Several people I know who own PC?s would love to have an all in one like the iMac for the simple fact it takes up less space. Whether the iMac is priced out of their range depends on the person.
Apple wants to increase marketshare. That's not easy for them
Thats a big assumption.
Im not sure that it is true. It is certainly true that you and I want Apple's marketshare to increase. But the reality is that it is easier to transition a smaller market to a new product. Apple is now on its second transition since Job's return, and they may yet have more instore.
Thinking back to the comments that have been made by Apple over the last few years I think they were striving to push marketshare, but when they decided to go intel they dropped that plan. That was before the mini was released.
We can all sit and complain about Apple's design mistakes, but those decisions are certainly made with aims in mind, and we are not in a position to know what those aims are. It is unfortunate that for many of us Apple's aims do not coincide with our own. We use our machines in a kind of purgatory, hoping that one day we will wake up to _OUR_ Apple, and not Job's.
USB ports for the consumer... let me see: keyboard, printer, camera, oops, none left for my iPod now that it doesn't support FW. A consumer needs a minimum of 4 USB ports, but yes, a hub will often do the trick. However, that is another 30 dollars the consumer is out.
Pros need a higher number of USB ports, and they need to be onboard the computer. I have four USB devices that will simply not work with any USB hub, and hhaving toswitch them would be a pain. Fortunately, I have an expandable G5 so I can get everything purring sweetly.
Your average laptop needs at least 3 USB ports: mouse, camera, printer. Many people use laptops as their only computers, so they tend to connect them as if they were desktops.
Simply put, like with onboard memory for many years, Apple has crippled its computers with poor connnectivity for a part that would not add much to the cost of the computer but would make a better device all around, and many happier customers.
It's too bad they don't allow you to adjust the sleep light in powerbooks. I have a brand new one, and while i think it's slightly darker, is it just me or does having a powerbook in the same room you are trying to sleep in suck? I always have to throw a shirt over it because of the horrible pulsing lights. I wish it would get really, really dim, I mean it's not like I'm gonna miss the sleep light.
Quote:
Originally posted by aegisdesign
I can think of plenty of examples when they do use more than is necessary.
MightyMouse - two buttons and a scroll wheel would have done but no, Apple used touch sensitive areas and a wacky trackball, that incidentally gets gummed up far too easily and has no way of being cleaned. I'm on my third.
iMac sleep lights. In Rev A it's just a light that gets dimmer at night based on the clock and some firmware. In Rev B there's an ambient light sensor!
Apple really thinks about the small details on their designs and if it needs extra parts to fulfil, they add them where others would cut the design to get the reduced parts count or use something off the shelf.
YES...This is what I have been saying for a long time, and it is only a matter of time before the OS is sold without hardware, Yes, you will still be able to get the great hardware that Apple designs, but for those of us who arent fucking millionairs, we will be able to spend $1500 and a weekend and have a system that likely would smoke apples $3000 unit out of the box (considering Apple ships their units with the bare minimum HDD and ram.)
Apple will have deals with the vendors, but they will come out a year later and say "well, our deal with dell/lenovo/hp is going just great, but the OS image is all over the internet and there are many people using it illegitimitly that would gladly pay for it were it not tied to hardware, so here it is, OSX shrinkwrapped for any x86 box...and it is $249, with subsequent updates being $129"
I agree but not anytime soon. Drivers, that is what makes this work and it takes time to write high quality drivers, so that you can put another high quality app around it. I know that Apple focused long and hard about how would software makers and Apple write drivers, and this is maybe the biggest headache for MS, drivers and hardware abstraction, very difficult, throw in compatibility and security and you have a nightmare. The great benefit of Unix is that it was written solely to make HW work, not for GUIs, mainly to keep the phones ringing. Apple has great HW because they have control. If Dell were to make a Mac they would have to follow strict instructions. Apple would have control over the chip set and would have final say after testing / certification. Basically Intel would provide chip sets and designs and maybe even prototypes to the others. But trust me widely varied HW is the boon and bane of MS, a company with much greater resources than Apple. I am sure that what Apple was waiting for was the OS, and an opportunity. Timing is everything, an opportune moment. Tiger is an OS of that quality, Leopard will be even more so.
.......USB 1.1 on a keyboard is fine for most flash drives I've used which seem to be pretty slow anyway. Maybe not for iPods and such though I guess if I used one a lot I'd have a dock...
USB1.1 on any of the iPods would be utterly horrible it is really really slow - check out the reviews for the USB1.1maxcapable KRAPR (oops i mean ROKR) motorola phone
Every time I hear the word "Mactel" it feels like someone pooped in my mouth. Mac-Tel...sounds like a bankrupt telecom.
Why not Maintel? It sounds like Macintosh.
As for the firmware, one thing I don't like about it is how it uses a hard drive partition. Why is it so complicated? Pity they didn't stick with Open Firmware.
Every time I hear the word "Mactel" it feels like someone pooped in my mouth. Mac-Tel...sounds like a bankrupt telecom.
Why not Maintel? It sounds like Macintosh.
As for the firmware, one thing I don't like about it is how it uses a hard drive partition. Why is it so complicated? Pity they didn't stick with Open Firmware.
Every time I hear the word "Mactel" it feels like someone pooped in my mouth. Mac-Tel...sounds like a bankrupt telecom.
Why not Maintel? It sounds like Macintosh.
As for the firmware, one thing I don't like about it is how it uses a hard drive partition. Why is it so complicated? Pity they didn't stick with Open Firmware.
"While I have no insight how much this will save Apple, let?s not also forget that Intel also offers marketing dollars (several hundred million, if I?m not mistaken) to [computer manufacturers] who display the 'Intel Inside,' 'Pentium,' and 'Centrino' logos on their hardware," Margevicius added. "I would expect Apple to do the same."
Why should they? On regular PCs Intel has to show it's name to compete with AMD, but if all Macs use Intel chips, there is no need to advertise it.
Every time I hear the word "Mactel" it feels like someone pooped in my mouth. Mac-Tel...sounds like a bankrupt telecom.
Why not Maintel? It sounds like Macintosh.
As for the firmware, one thing I don't like about it is how it uses a hard drive partition. Why is it so complicated? Pity they didn't stick with Open Firmware.
These are HUGE risks. Don't take Microsoft so lightly. Apple won't grow marketshare just because it tried.
Microsoft has the size, resources, and patience to dominate which ever market it chooses. Microsoft has defeated companies which had a better position in a particular market which MS has entered late. Microsoft has defeated companies in their own markets with inferior software.
Microsoft has its eye on both Google and Sony. Apple, like Sun, is one of those "enemys you know". Even at 2-3x Apple's current share its not a potential threat to MS dominance like Google or perhaps Linux could be.
Nor is it really standing in the way like Sony for the transition to the set top. A potential competitor but smaller than Sony and without a game platform. Still Apple is a potential player and MS is more likely looking far more closely at any set top convergence scenarios over desk top share scenarios. The ipod/itunes combo could be the entry ticket that overcomes the PS3/XBox 360/BR/HD-DVD advantage.
If OSX can take mindshare away from Linux and Vista equally, I doubt Bill will be losing any sleep. An enemy that you know and beaten often before on a familiar field.
Microsoft has its eye on both Google and Sony. Apple, like Sun, is one of those "enemys you know". Even at 2-3x Apple's current share its not a potential threat to MS dominance like Google or perhaps Linux could be.
Nor is it really standing in the way like Sony for the transition to the set top. A potential competitor but smaller than Sony and without a game platform. Still Apple is a potential player and MS is more likely looking far more closely at any set top convergence scenarios over desk top share scenarios. The ipod/itunes combo could be the entry ticket that overcomes the PS3/XBox 360/BR/HD-DVD advantage.
If OSX can take mindshare away from Linux and Vista equally, I doubt Bill will be losing any sleep. An enemy that you know and beaten often before on a familiar field.
Vinea
Help me out here what are the best examples of Linux currently shipping, and what is its compatability issues or non-issues on Intel HW? I keep hearing about the Linux threat, and I would like to know what that is and I would suppose that something like that would be made even more potent when Intel really gets the "standard" chipset going.
Microsoft has its eye on both Google and Sony. Apple, like Sun, is one of those "enemys you know". Even at 2-3x Apple's current share its not a potential threat to MS dominance like Google or perhaps Linux could be.
Nor is it really standing in the way like Sony for the transition to the set top. A potential competitor but smaller than Sony and without a game platform. Still Apple is a potential player and MS is more likely looking far more closely at any set top convergence scenarios over desk top share scenarios. The ipod/itunes combo could be the entry ticket that overcomes the PS3/XBox 360/BR/HD-DVD advantage.
If OSX can take mindshare away from Linux and Vista equally, I doubt Bill will be losing any sleep. An enemy that you know and beaten often before on a familiar field.
Vinea
This is hard to say. I've given it more thought that I'd like.
It depends on how Apple gets its marketshare.
If it increases, but slows down, that's one thing. So, we see 4.3% now. If we see 5.3 next year, then 6.3, then 7.3, etc, Ms might not have a problem. The percentage of growth is slowing down fast. By the time it would get to 10%, it might be coming to a halt, not getting above 11% or so, about the higest it's ever been. Considering tha Mac users buy a lot of Office, and less but still significant amounts of VPC and Windows products, MS might be fairly happy.
But, if the pace quickens... 4.3% this year, 6.3 the next, 8.3 after that, maybe 10.5 after that, MS would get very concerned before it got to that level.
The fear is that they would stop development of Office, and then discontinue it. Also, make it more difficult to connect to Windows networks, etc.
Comments
Originally posted by jccbin
melgross:
The number of permutations that would give Apple a $999 G5 tower are almost limitless. It is not and never has been a question of could they build it. It is a question of whether they can have that unit as a part of their overall offerings and maximize their revenue/profits.
Could Apple sell this $999 G5? Yes. How would it's design, manufacture and distribution affect the production of Mac minis, iMac G5s and Full Tower G5s? Would the addition of the $999 G5 microtower make minis and iMac G5s economically infeasible due to production line costs, design costs, etc?
If Apple were selling 20 million computers a year, instead of 1-2 million, the answers to those questions might be different. But Apple does not have the economies of scale that it WILL have when it moves to the Intel platform. Apple will inherit those economies for some of their internals.
All of this allegedly-saved money will have almost nothing to do with the feature set and pricing of the Mactels they manufacture - that will be determined by the bean counters.
I don't agree. The people who but iMacs, for the most part are not the people who would buy seperates. It's like audio. There are people who will only buy tuners, pre-amps, and power amps. Then there are those who would only buy recievers. There is some crossover, but not as much as you would think.
I'm sure that Apple would rather sell a $999 machine than one for $699.
Apple has been selling more computers than they ever have before. That's good. Now that they are being recognized by a greater public than ever before as well.
Most of that public consists of Windows users. They don't think the way you seem to. Some will go for the all-in-one, and some for the Mini, but many won't. Many want a mini tower, and they won't, or can't, pay $2,000 for it. Even $1,500 seems to be too much.
Even many people here, on this very site, would buy a $999 mini tower, if offered.
There is a big hole in their product line. That's obvious. PM sales have sunk to very low levels, about 125,000 sold last quarter.
Because Apple never overlooks anything, and never makes mistakes?
The people at Apple are human of course they make mistakes.
For most of the time Apple has been in existence, their computers let people remove and replace most parts. This was never a problem before, why should it be now?
I think you are missing the philosophy of the iMac. Jobs' intention for the iMac is that the consumer does not need to deal with the computer. I know seven people who own the iMac G5. They don?t know much about computers, don?t have any desire or even care to know. All they want is for the thing to work.
Or are you saying that what PC people say is true, that Mac people are too ignorant of their machines and so shouldn't be allowed to open them?
As I think of the people I know with computers, 90% have little to no understanding of how their computer works. Probably at least 75% don?t understand their computers full capability.
How do you know that only a small minority of people want to get into their iMac?
Because most people never figured out how to get their VCR to stop flashing 12:00.
Apple went and threw out all of the interior design that made the earlier models great, other than the form itself. No more user replaceable parts. No more easy VESA mount. No more two memory slots.
Come the PM G5. Where is the second external bay? Gone. Why? Don't we want one any more?
It's like removing the "start" button from the keyboard. I don't know of anyone who preferred NOT having that button.
Why can't a $3,300 PM have the same 4 or 5 USB2 ports that a $500 PC does?
These are all conscious choices mad by Apple. None of us here can say for sure why they made these choices. We can only speculate. I?m sure much of it is economics versus what the consumer will actually find useful.
I can agree with you on many of your complaints.
As expensive as the PowerMac we should have internal RAID at this point.
The start button on the keyboard. Who knows? I forgot it even used to be there.
From what I understand about the USB ports. In one sense yes it would be nice to have more. But on cheap commodity computers they are all on the same bus. So it becomes diminishing returns if you actually ever use all of them. I could see Apple making the argument that?s a reason why not to have so many.
Most of that public consists of Windows users. They don't think the way you seem to. Some will go for the all-in-one, and some for the Mini, but many won't.
I agree Apple needs to develop a $999 mini tower. I?m sure they will.
The large majority of PC owners I know don?t know much difference between tower size. Several people I know who own PC?s would love to have an all in one like the iMac for the simple fact it takes up less space. Whether the iMac is priced out of their range depends on the person.
Originally posted by melgross
Naturally, it's Apple's choice.
But is that choice a good one?
Apple wants to increase marketshare. That's not easy for them
Thats a big assumption.
Im not sure that it is true. It is certainly true that you and I want Apple's marketshare to increase. But the reality is that it is easier to transition a smaller market to a new product. Apple is now on its second transition since Job's return, and they may yet have more instore.
Thinking back to the comments that have been made by Apple over the last few years I think they were striving to push marketshare, but when they decided to go intel they dropped that plan. That was before the mini was released.
We can all sit and complain about Apple's design mistakes, but those decisions are certainly made with aims in mind, and we are not in a position to know what those aims are. It is unfortunate that for many of us Apple's aims do not coincide with our own. We use our machines in a kind of purgatory, hoping that one day we will wake up to _OUR_ Apple, and not Job's.
Pros need a higher number of USB ports, and they need to be onboard the computer. I have four USB devices that will simply not work with any USB hub, and hhaving toswitch them would be a pain. Fortunately, I have an expandable G5 so I can get everything purring sweetly.
Your average laptop needs at least 3 USB ports: mouse, camera, printer. Many people use laptops as their only computers, so they tend to connect them as if they were desktops.
Simply put, like with onboard memory for many years, Apple has crippled its computers with poor connnectivity for a part that would not add much to the cost of the computer but would make a better device all around, and many happier customers.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
I can think of plenty of examples when they do use more than is necessary.
MightyMouse - two buttons and a scroll wheel would have done but no, Apple used touch sensitive areas and a wacky trackball, that incidentally gets gummed up far too easily and has no way of being cleaned. I'm on my third.
iMac sleep lights. In Rev A it's just a light that gets dimmer at night based on the clock and some firmware. In Rev B there's an ambient light sensor!
Apple really thinks about the small details on their designs and if it needs extra parts to fulfil, they add them where others would cut the design to get the reduced parts count or use something off the shelf.
Originally posted by a_greer
YES...This is what I have been saying for a long time, and it is only a matter of time before the OS is sold without hardware, Yes, you will still be able to get the great hardware that Apple designs, but for those of us who arent fucking millionairs, we will be able to spend $1500 and a weekend and have a system that likely would smoke apples $3000 unit out of the box (considering Apple ships their units with the bare minimum HDD and ram.)
Apple will have deals with the vendors, but they will come out a year later and say "well, our deal with dell/lenovo/hp is going just great, but the OS image is all over the internet and there are many people using it illegitimitly that would gladly pay for it were it not tied to hardware, so here it is, OSX shrinkwrapped for any x86 box...and it is $249, with subsequent updates being $129"
I agree but not anytime soon. Drivers, that is what makes this work and it takes time to write high quality drivers, so that you can put another high quality app around it. I know that Apple focused long and hard about how would software makers and Apple write drivers, and this is maybe the biggest headache for MS, drivers and hardware abstraction, very difficult, throw in compatibility and security and you have a nightmare. The great benefit of Unix is that it was written solely to make HW work, not for GUIs, mainly to keep the phones ringing. Apple has great HW because they have control. If Dell were to make a Mac they would have to follow strict instructions. Apple would have control over the chip set and would have final say after testing / certification. Basically Intel would provide chip sets and designs and maybe even prototypes to the others. But trust me widely varied HW is the boon and bane of MS, a company with much greater resources than Apple. I am sure that what Apple was waiting for was the OS, and an opportunity. Timing is everything, an opportune moment. Tiger is an OS of that quality, Leopard will be even more so.
.......USB 1.1 on a keyboard is fine for most flash drives I've used which seem to be pretty slow anyway. Maybe not for iPods and such though I guess if I used one a lot I'd have a dock...
USB1.1 on any of the iPods would be utterly horrible
Why not Maintel? It sounds like Macintosh.
As for the firmware, one thing I don't like about it is how it uses a hard drive partition. Why is it so complicated? Pity they didn't stick with Open Firmware.
Originally posted by strobe
Every time I hear the word "Mactel" it feels like someone pooped in my mouth. Mac-Tel...sounds like a bankrupt telecom.
Why not Maintel? It sounds like Macintosh.
As for the firmware, one thing I don't like about it is how it uses a hard drive partition. Why is it so complicated? Pity they didn't stick with Open Firmware.
I think Apple is trying to trademark "Mactel".
Originally posted by strobe
Every time I hear the word "Mactel" it feels like someone pooped in my mouth. Mac-Tel...sounds like a bankrupt telecom.
Why not Maintel? It sounds like Macintosh.
As for the firmware, one thing I don't like about it is how it uses a hard drive partition. Why is it so complicated? Pity they didn't stick with Open Firmware.
I think Apple is trying to trademark "Mactel".
Originally posted by Nine-Seventy
Please please please no 'Intel Inside' stickers
The only way I could see apple doing it is having the logo etched into the cases - that might be classy??
I agree with you, etch and put the logo on the inside of the case.
Originally posted by NordicMan
I agree with you, etch and put the logo on the inside of the case.
heh.
Originally posted by AppleInsider
"While I have no insight how much this will save Apple, let?s not also forget that Intel also offers marketing dollars (several hundred million, if I?m not mistaken) to [computer manufacturers] who display the 'Intel Inside,' 'Pentium,' and 'Centrino' logos on their hardware," Margevicius added. "I would expect Apple to do the same."
Why should they? On regular PCs Intel has to show it's name to compete with AMD, but if all Macs use Intel chips, there is no need to advertise it.
Originally posted by zunx
Great news:
- Cheap Mactels.
- Mactels with great PC features like double DVD drives & more VRAM.
- Quiet Mactels.
- Frontal connectors.
Intel will design and manufacture the motherboard (according to Apple's wishes) - not the computer case, fans, GPUs and so on.
Originally posted by melgross
There is a big hole in their product line. That's obvious. PM sales have sunk to very low levels, about 125,000 sold last quarter.
And iMac sales are higher than ever. See a pattern yet?
Most people just don't need big box computers.
Originally posted by strobe
Every time I hear the word "Mactel" it feels like someone pooped in my mouth. Mac-Tel...sounds like a bankrupt telecom.
Apple, then, needs to tradmark "Hot Carl."
Originally posted by strobe
Every time I hear the word "Mactel" it feels like someone pooped in my mouth. Mac-Tel...sounds like a bankrupt telecom.
Why not Maintel? It sounds like Macintosh.
As for the firmware, one thing I don't like about it is how it uses a hard drive partition. Why is it so complicated? Pity they didn't stick with Open Firmware.
I think Apple is trying to trademark "Mactel".
Originally posted by TenoBell
These are HUGE risks. Don't take Microsoft so lightly. Apple won't grow marketshare just because it tried.
Microsoft has the size, resources, and patience to dominate which ever market it chooses. Microsoft has defeated companies which had a better position in a particular market which MS has entered late. Microsoft has defeated companies in their own markets with inferior software.
Microsoft has its eye on both Google and Sony. Apple, like Sun, is one of those "enemys you know". Even at 2-3x Apple's current share its not a potential threat to MS dominance like Google or perhaps Linux could be.
Nor is it really standing in the way like Sony for the transition to the set top. A potential competitor but smaller than Sony and without a game platform. Still Apple is a potential player and MS is more likely looking far more closely at any set top convergence scenarios over desk top share scenarios. The ipod/itunes combo could be the entry ticket that overcomes the PS3/XBox 360/BR/HD-DVD advantage.
If OSX can take mindshare away from Linux and Vista equally, I doubt Bill will be losing any sleep. An enemy that you know and beaten often before on a familiar field.
Vinea
Originally posted by vinea
Microsoft has its eye on both Google and Sony. Apple, like Sun, is one of those "enemys you know". Even at 2-3x Apple's current share its not a potential threat to MS dominance like Google or perhaps Linux could be.
Nor is it really standing in the way like Sony for the transition to the set top. A potential competitor but smaller than Sony and without a game platform. Still Apple is a potential player and MS is more likely looking far more closely at any set top convergence scenarios over desk top share scenarios. The ipod/itunes combo could be the entry ticket that overcomes the PS3/XBox 360/BR/HD-DVD advantage.
If OSX can take mindshare away from Linux and Vista equally, I doubt Bill will be losing any sleep. An enemy that you know and beaten often before on a familiar field.
Vinea
Help me out here what are the best examples of Linux currently shipping, and what is its compatability issues or non-issues on Intel HW? I keep hearing about the Linux threat, and I would like to know what that is and I would suppose that something like that would be made even more potent when Intel really gets the "standard" chipset going.
Ty
Originally posted by vinea
Microsoft has its eye on both Google and Sony. Apple, like Sun, is one of those "enemys you know". Even at 2-3x Apple's current share its not a potential threat to MS dominance like Google or perhaps Linux could be.
Nor is it really standing in the way like Sony for the transition to the set top. A potential competitor but smaller than Sony and without a game platform. Still Apple is a potential player and MS is more likely looking far more closely at any set top convergence scenarios over desk top share scenarios. The ipod/itunes combo could be the entry ticket that overcomes the PS3/XBox 360/BR/HD-DVD advantage.
If OSX can take mindshare away from Linux and Vista equally, I doubt Bill will be losing any sleep. An enemy that you know and beaten often before on a familiar field.
Vinea
This is hard to say. I've given it more thought that I'd like.
It depends on how Apple gets its marketshare.
If it increases, but slows down, that's one thing. So, we see 4.3% now. If we see 5.3 next year, then 6.3, then 7.3, etc, Ms might not have a problem. The percentage of growth is slowing down fast. By the time it would get to 10%, it might be coming to a halt, not getting above 11% or so, about the higest it's ever been. Considering tha Mac users buy a lot of Office, and less but still significant amounts of VPC and Windows products, MS might be fairly happy.
But, if the pace quickens... 4.3% this year, 6.3 the next, 8.3 after that, maybe 10.5 after that, MS would get very concerned before it got to that level.
The fear is that they would stop development of Office, and then discontinue it. Also, make it more difficult to connect to Windows networks, etc.