if you read Ballmer's comment at the end carefully, he is not saying Apple will fail in the consumer market due to its integrated hardware/software model, he limits that remark to the enterprise market.
which tells me MS knows Apple will keep pushing up its home consumer market share substantially, but MS is determined to hang on to its worldwide enterprise hegemony, and he believes it can - and that it has to. that is where the big bucks are for MS - all the enterprise fees and services - not selling cheap Windows licenses to OEM's for home computers.
Apple could establish a modest but significant presence in the US enterprise market if it really tried really hard, but i don't believe it will. it's a different mind set, to be a services company (look at MobileMe).
But there is one potential competitor that really could take on and take half or more of MS's enterprise business away: Oracle! and given the size of Larry Ellison's ego, i bet one day they do.
Windows will mainly be a corporate thing, stuck with by companies who are currently already heavily invested in Windows, or chosen by home users who are resistant to change.
Google OS will be hot off the heels of Android/Chrome, given away for free to manufacturers. It will be simple, easy and quick and very popular with home users, education and corporations looking for low cost computers (computers themselves may be heavily subsidised if Google AdWords are implemented into the OS - we're talking $99 laptops). It will be embraced by developing nations as the OS of choice.
Mac will be the superior system, with its growth constrained only by the higher prices which makes them unattainable for many. That said, due to its profit margins, Apple will be the wealthiest company.
Linux will be a solid open source community developed OS, but not widely embraced by general consumers.
As many more devices become more like mini-computers, the 'Other' category will grow.
And then 2028? Who knows...
IMO-Google will struggle to have 10% of the phone OS market in ten years.
Googles theoretical prospects of capturing more than 1% of the PC OS market is slim.
Lots of companies could provide very cheap PC's if it was viable.In some markets it is feasible but not eneough to take more than about 1% of the market share.People will overall be able to pay for an increasingly affordable Apple system of one kind or another.
Apple will have an astonishing 50% of the PC OS market in five years ( end of fiscal year 2013) withought including it's mobile OSX platform on phones, iPods, tablets and revolutionary wifi enabled gadgets(mass produced beacons)
if you read Ballmer's comment at the end carefully, he is not saying Apple will fail in the consumer market due to its integrated hardware/software model, he limits that remark to the enterprise market.
Exactly, and many people fail to understand that the enterprise market has nothing to do with the home user market. The rules are just not the same.
Many people make that mistake, for instance when they claim that Linux big advantage is that it's free. In the real enterprise world, Linux is barely less expensive than Windows. Anyway, if you're using your OS to run softwares like Autocad, Oracle, Websphere or a big CMS, the cost of the OS is dwarfed by the cost of the software and their maintainance.
Likewise, the OS is much less important than for a home user. On servers, you don't see the GUI most of the time anyway - hence why Linux works well on servers. But even on the desktop, most corporate users will spend their days using only a couple of applications. I just launch a few applications every time I reboot Windows, and that's about once a month, and they stay open day after day. My interaction with the OS is minimum - and as a developer, I'm considered a user with special needs in the enterprise context.
The OS is merely an application launcher. That's why enterprises are so slow to adopt Vista. Or even XP. Most of their needs are already covered by Windows 2000...
Quote:
Apple could establish a modest but significant presence in the US enterprise market if it really tried really hard, but i don't believe it will. it's a different mind set, to be a services company (look at MobileMe).
I don't think it could, the gap is just too wide between Apple and the enterprise world.
You have no widely recognized certifications for Mac admins - something both Windows and Linux have. Any major company is able to hire certified admins for Linux or Windows with little risks thanks to the certification system. With Mac, that would be a complete gamble. With the added cost that Mac admins are a rarity.
Likewise, Mac computers are very expensive. Even worse, there is a gap between the iMac and the Mac Pro that is exactly where companies have their needs. You can't afford to buy Mac Pros for every developers, graphists...
Quote:
But there is one potential competitor that really could take on and take half or more of MS's enterprise business away: Oracle! and given the size of Larry Ellison's ego, i bet one day they do.
I would also put my bets on Google... The current context is to move more and more business applications to web applications. They suit most business needs and they bring a lot of good things to the balance.
Web applications run fine on Linux servers (with Oracle, Java, Websphere...). And they run extremelly well on Google Chrome. Once Google stabilises its browser, it will be one of the best platform to run web applications on - because it's actually designed from scratch to do that. While Internet Explorer is one of the worst.
In this context, what do you need Windows (or MacOS) for? You don't need it on the server side and on the client side you only need it to run Google Chrome...
This has led many observers to expect that Microsoft would attempt to release its own 'Zune phone' model, but the company has said no such product is the works
Apple will not make a video iPod. Apple will not enter the mobile phone market.
If Apple was no threat to MS then he would not even talk about them.
The fact that he is spending so much time and effort trying to 'put down' the competition shows how wrong he it. In fact he is just giving Apple more free publicity every time he mentions them.
IMO-Google will struggle to have 10% of the phone OS market in ten years.
Googles theoretical prospects of capturing more than 1% of the PC OS market is slim.
Lots of companies could provide very cheap PC's if it was viable.In some markets it is feasible but not eneough to take more than about 1% of the market share.People will overall be able to pay for an increasingly affordable Apple system of one kind or another.
Apple will have an astonishing 50% of the PC OS market in five years ( end of fiscal year 2013) withought including it's mobile OSX platform on phones, iPods, tablets and revolutionary wifi enabled gadgets(mass produced beacons)
The big market share loser being MS.
I have no clue where they calculuate < 1% for Linux, other than commercial install base being the benchmark.
As for 5% he's off his f'n rocker. The two desktops pushing the envelope will be OS X, then Linux and here is where the ball gets dropped by Microsoft with it's countless delays of future systems.
Big Iron Systems will have AIX, Solaris 15/OpenSolaris and the growth of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and more will continue to grow, as well.
Hell, Oracle is starting to offer their own Hardware with their Enterprise Databases and realizes that they need vertical differentiation to justify their pricing structure with competition from PostgreSQL, even MySQL, Sybase, Informix/DB2, and future Database design solutions yet to be resolved in the fields of Discrete Mathematics, Combinatorics and Tensor Calculus.
I was amazed to find that our Enterprise made the iphone available as a phone option!? Normally our organisation being a big one is slow to adopt new things but we had the iphone available very quickly (some pressure from the top I think).
From what I hear there been a lot of people requesting them now.
There's also an ongoing project looking at integrating Mac's into the enterprise and there's even talk about looking into iphone software development!?
I'm in software development myself and I can imagine a lot of enterprise mobile applications. Giving remote access to corporate employees on site for example. Development certainly looks more streamlines compared to windows mobile..
I think we may be seeing an iphone halo effect in the enterprise!?
If IBM had acquired the exclusive rights to DOS, there would be no PC clones, IBM probably still dominate the PC market, and MS would not be the industrial hegemonist that it is now. This suboptimal solution of one platform - many hardware manufacturers is an accident of history that arose out of the above-mentioned special circumstances. For Ballmer to claim that it is naturally superior to one platform - one hardware manufacturer only reveals the depth of his misunderstanding.
You are right, I saw the movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley, and like my dad say, if IBM never open up DOS, MS is nobody. Steve Jobs made a mistake by bringing in Bill Gates too deep into Apple. I wonder if history will repeat it self with that 1 Google fella in Apple meeting.
Does it actually work yet? I tried it a few months ago, and it took 30 minutes just to load, and barely was able to do anything at all on then brand new iMac. I wrote it off as still beta for a reason (not ready yet).
30 minutes? Barely able to do anything? You've got to be kidding! I've been using it (NeoOffice / Open Office X11) for years as a viable substitute for MS Office. After the initial startup (MS cheats during bootup) which is still comfortably under 10 sec on a 2GHz Core Duo, its actually quite quick.
It also does a better job reading and writing files to various versions of MS Office better than MS Office does itself.
Apple has such enormous potential in its hands with the iPhone and I do worry that its attitude towards the development community at the moment leaves a lot to be desired and could be its undoing Vs. Android et. al.
Dear Mr. Language Police,
Your sentence above is a run-on. Also, you should not capitalize Vs. in the middle of a sentence and the latin word et should not be followed by a period. Additionally, vs. is an abbreviation of versus that you incorrectly use where you seem to mean something like "at the hands of ...."
Your sentence above is a run-on. Also, you should not capitalize Vs. in the middle of a sentence and the latin word et should not be followed by a period. Additionally, vs. is an abbreviation of versus that you incorrectly use where you seem to mean something like "at the hands of ...."
Touché . All good points apart from the suggestion that I shouldn't have used versus. Replace "versus" with "against" and the sentence makes sense. The point is that Apple is competing against (versus) a number of competitors in the smart-phone space; as it stands I think the market in 10 years' time is theirs to lose through actions they are taking right now.
...It succeeded in spite of it because IBM gifted them with a monopoly in the PC market. ... For Ballmer to claim that it is naturally superior to one platform - one hardware manufacturer only reveals the depth of his misunderstanding.
Holy crap! Someone else who broke through the "Reality Distortion Field" and can see the true reason for Microsoft's fortune. Well said!
Let's also not forget that it was Steve Jobs who asked Bill Gates to create an office suite for the Mac, when Apple already had their own in house office suite written for the Lisa. Furthermore, Apple was coerced into allowing Microsoft to port the Macintosh Toolbox API to DOS, so they could create their own GUI based office suite. Could you imagine what the OS/office landscape would look like now if Steve never went to Microsoft and just ported "7/7" from the Lisa?
Anyway, back on subject...
I don't remember Bill Gates ever being so vocal about Apple? Ballmer comes across as being an envious, spiteful, half-wit, who's going to take his ball home, if the others won't let him win. I suppose he has to say some of those things to put up a front for the stock holders sake, but come on man! Does he not realize that Apple's marketing is going to hit at Windows, not because they hate Windows, but because Microsoft has the dominant share of the market, they're the biggest target. Comparing Apple to say, Linux would be dumb, who could relate to those ads?
The thing that really gets me is the weird "smart" phone marketing. Why is everyone ONLY comparing their new phones to the iPhone? It's RIM Vs. iPhone, Android vs. iPhone, Nokia vs. iPhone, T-Mobile vs. iPhone, Windows Mobile vs. iPhone, etc... Why not Android vs. RIM or Nokia vs. Windows Mobile? iPhone is not the biggest kid on the block here (although it could quite possibly the loudest). The only explanation for this behavior is the iPhone is the new standard and EVERYONE else is trying to get there, but at the exact same time, they are all trying to play down the iPhone's benefits and play up it's flaws. Microsoft was famous for this hypocrisy; creating FUD, while trying to play catch-up.
Ballmer similarly argued that Apple will fail to see further Mac share gains or make strides in the enterprise market because it won't license the Mac OS to third-party hardware vendors.
"Apple's a good company, I won't take anything away from them, but they have a certain kind of strategy," Ballmer said. "They believe in putting the hardware and software together, they don't believe in letting other people make it."
"I'm not saying there isn't a threat" he added. But if we "do our jobs right, there's really no reason Apple should get any footprint in the enterprise."
It's the high prices that keep Apple from growing out of its 5% niche of Mac faithfuls. If Steve Jobs waits any longer to lower prices drastically, he will be blamed for keeping Apple small when Apple could have grown its market share while Microsoft experienced a lukewarm reception for Vista.
The one man company is a formula for failure, especially if he is a one-man-knows-it-all type. If only Steve Jobs understood that much of business.
Does it actually work yet? I tried it a few months ago, and it took 30 minutes just to load, and barely was able to do anything at all on then brand new iMac. I wrote it off as still beta for a reason (not ready yet).
NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X. Based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, NeoOffice has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office.
NeoOffice is one of the most stable office suites for Mac OS X. We have created an office suite that is adapted to the unique needs of Mac users by taking the features in Sun Microsystems' OpenOffice.org office suite and adding improvements
Indeed, you're certainly not the only one. As far as I can see, the "iPhone halo effect" has a much greater potential to get people to switch to Macs than the "iPod halo effect". This is a very exciting prospect. I only hope that Apple doesn't fuck it up by pissing off all the iPhone developers. The fact that the NDA prevents discussion about iPhone development really is ridiculous and I hope Apple sorts it out soon.
Correcion: Apple has pissed off a handful of very vocal, IMO extremely whiny developers. The tech media (including John Gruber unfotunately, whose site I really dig) of course is blowing it all out of proportion.
Fact is, money talks, BS walks, and the evidence suggests that the vast majority of devs are pretty OK with Apple and the App Store.
I was amazed to find that our Enterprise made the iphone available as a phone option!? Normally our organisation being a big one is slow to adopt new things but we had the iphone available very quickly (some pressure from the top I think).
From what I hear there been a lot of people requesting them now.
There's also an ongoing project looking at integrating Mac's into the enterprise and there's even talk about looking into iphone software development!?
I'm in software development myself and I can imagine a lot of enterprise mobile applications. Giving remote access to corporate employees on site for example. Development certainly looks more streamlines compared to windows mobile..
I think we may be seeing an iphone halo effect in the enterprise!?
I recently did a gig for Axel Springer Verlag in Berlin (Germany's largest newspaper publisher and Apple's largest corporate customer to date) and everyone in upper management got a free iPhone + contract at the event. Lucky bastiges :-)
There are a going to be a lot of companies switching over to the iPhone very soon, mark my words.
Ballmer wants their competitor to make the mistake that MS made, so after that MS will launch their own Zune Phone and Ballmer will laugh at the competitor and he will say the opposite at what he said today(today as in the about the topic)
It's the high prices that keep Apple from growing out of its 5% niche of Mac faithfuls. If Steve Jobs waits any longer to lower prices drastically, he will be blamed for keeping Apple small when Apple could have grown its market share while Microsoft experienced a lukewarm reception for Vista.
The one man company is a formula for failure, especially if he is a one-man-knows-it-all type. If only Steve Jobs understood that much of business.
1. I'm quite sure that Jobs understands a lot more about business than you do.
2. If it weren't for Jobs and his team, Apple would be dead by now. Period.
3. Who ever said that Apple wants to get as big as MS? If I had the choice between making goo-gobs of money efficiently (which is exactly what Apple is doing now) and doing everything I can just to obtain market share (look where that got Dell nowadays), I'd rather choose the former.
4. Don't blame Jobs because YOU can't afford a Mac.
Comments
which tells me MS knows Apple will keep pushing up its home consumer market share substantially, but MS is determined to hang on to its worldwide enterprise hegemony, and he believes it can - and that it has to. that is where the big bucks are for MS - all the enterprise fees and services - not selling cheap Windows licenses to OEM's for home computers.
Apple could establish a modest but significant presence in the US enterprise market if it really tried really hard, but i don't believe it will. it's a different mind set, to be a services company (look at MobileMe).
But there is one potential competitor that really could take on and take half or more of MS's enterprise business away: Oracle! and given the size of Larry Ellison's ego, i bet one day they do.
OS market share in August 2008 (source: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=8):
Windows: 90.66%
Mac + iPhone: 8.16%
Linux: 0.93%
Other: 0.25%
My estimate for August 2018:
Windows: 40%
Google OS: 34%
Mac + iPhone: 20%
Linux: 5%
Other: 1%
Windows will mainly be a corporate thing, stuck with by companies who are currently already heavily invested in Windows, or chosen by home users who are resistant to change.
Google OS will be hot off the heels of Android/Chrome, given away for free to manufacturers. It will be simple, easy and quick and very popular with home users, education and corporations looking for low cost computers (computers themselves may be heavily subsidised if Google AdWords are implemented into the OS - we're talking $99 laptops). It will be embraced by developing nations as the OS of choice.
Mac will be the superior system, with its growth constrained only by the higher prices which makes them unattainable for many. That said, due to its profit margins, Apple will be the wealthiest company.
Linux will be a solid open source community developed OS, but not widely embraced by general consumers.
As many more devices become more like mini-computers, the 'Other' category will grow.
And then 2028? Who knows...
IMO-Google will struggle to have 10% of the phone OS market in ten years.
Googles theoretical prospects of capturing more than 1% of the PC OS market is slim.
Lots of companies could provide very cheap PC's if it was viable.In some markets it is feasible but not eneough to take more than about 1% of the market share.People will overall be able to pay for an increasingly affordable Apple system of one kind or another.
Apple will have an astonishing 50% of the PC OS market in five years ( end of fiscal year 2013) withought including it's mobile OSX platform on phones, iPods, tablets and revolutionary wifi enabled gadgets(mass produced beacons)
The big market share loser being MS.
"Ballmer blackout tumbles on!"
if you read Ballmer's comment at the end carefully, he is not saying Apple will fail in the consumer market due to its integrated hardware/software model, he limits that remark to the enterprise market.
Exactly, and many people fail to understand that the enterprise market has nothing to do with the home user market. The rules are just not the same.
Many people make that mistake, for instance when they claim that Linux big advantage is that it's free. In the real enterprise world, Linux is barely less expensive than Windows. Anyway, if you're using your OS to run softwares like Autocad, Oracle, Websphere or a big CMS, the cost of the OS is dwarfed by the cost of the software and their maintainance.
Likewise, the OS is much less important than for a home user. On servers, you don't see the GUI most of the time anyway - hence why Linux works well on servers. But even on the desktop, most corporate users will spend their days using only a couple of applications. I just launch a few applications every time I reboot Windows, and that's about once a month, and they stay open day after day. My interaction with the OS is minimum - and as a developer, I'm considered a user with special needs in the enterprise context.
The OS is merely an application launcher. That's why enterprises are so slow to adopt Vista. Or even XP. Most of their needs are already covered by Windows 2000...
Apple could establish a modest but significant presence in the US enterprise market if it really tried really hard, but i don't believe it will. it's a different mind set, to be a services company (look at MobileMe).
I don't think it could, the gap is just too wide between Apple and the enterprise world.
You have no widely recognized certifications for Mac admins - something both Windows and Linux have. Any major company is able to hire certified admins for Linux or Windows with little risks thanks to the certification system. With Mac, that would be a complete gamble. With the added cost that Mac admins are a rarity.
Likewise, Mac computers are very expensive. Even worse, there is a gap between the iMac and the Mac Pro that is exactly where companies have their needs. You can't afford to buy Mac Pros for every developers, graphists...
But there is one potential competitor that really could take on and take half or more of MS's enterprise business away: Oracle! and given the size of Larry Ellison's ego, i bet one day they do.
I would also put my bets on Google... The current context is to move more and more business applications to web applications. They suit most business needs and they bring a lot of good things to the balance.
Web applications run fine on Linux servers (with Oracle, Java, Websphere...). And they run extremelly well on Google Chrome. Once Google stabilises its browser, it will be one of the best platform to run web applications on - because it's actually designed from scratch to do that. While Internet Explorer is one of the worst.
In this context, what do you need Windows (or MacOS) for? You don't need it on the server side and on the client side you only need it to run Google Chrome...
This has led many observers to expect that Microsoft would attempt to release its own 'Zune phone' model, but the company has said no such product is the works
Apple will not make a video iPod. Apple will not enter the mobile phone market.
The fact that he is spending so much time and effort trying to 'put down' the competition shows how wrong he it. In fact he is just giving Apple more free publicity every time he mentions them.
IMO-Google will struggle to have 10% of the phone OS market in ten years.
Googles theoretical prospects of capturing more than 1% of the PC OS market is slim.
Lots of companies could provide very cheap PC's if it was viable.In some markets it is feasible but not eneough to take more than about 1% of the market share.People will overall be able to pay for an increasingly affordable Apple system of one kind or another.
Apple will have an astonishing 50% of the PC OS market in five years ( end of fiscal year 2013) withought including it's mobile OSX platform on phones, iPods, tablets and revolutionary wifi enabled gadgets(mass produced beacons)
The big market share loser being MS.
I have no clue where they calculuate < 1% for Linux, other than commercial install base being the benchmark.
As for 5% he's off his f'n rocker. The two desktops pushing the envelope will be OS X, then Linux and here is where the ball gets dropped by Microsoft with it's countless delays of future systems.
Big Iron Systems will have AIX, Solaris 15/OpenSolaris and the growth of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and more will continue to grow, as well.
Hell, Oracle is starting to offer their own Hardware with their Enterprise Databases and realizes that they need vertical differentiation to justify their pricing structure with competition from PostgreSQL, even MySQL, Sybase, Informix/DB2, and future Database design solutions yet to be resolved in the fields of Discrete Mathematics, Combinatorics and Tensor Calculus.
From what I hear there been a lot of people requesting them now.
There's also an ongoing project looking at integrating Mac's into the enterprise and there's even talk about looking into iphone software development!?
I'm in software development myself and I can imagine a lot of enterprise mobile applications. Giving remote access to corporate employees on site for example. Development certainly looks more streamlines compared to windows mobile..
I think we may be seeing an iphone halo effect in the enterprise!?
If IBM had acquired the exclusive rights to DOS, there would be no PC clones, IBM probably still dominate the PC market, and MS would not be the industrial hegemonist that it is now. This suboptimal solution of one platform - many hardware manufacturers is an accident of history that arose out of the above-mentioned special circumstances. For Ballmer to claim that it is naturally superior to one platform - one hardware manufacturer only reveals the depth of his misunderstanding.
You are right, I saw the movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley, and like my dad say, if IBM never open up DOS, MS is nobody. Steve Jobs made a mistake by bringing in Bill Gates too deep into Apple. I wonder if history will repeat it self with that 1 Google fella in Apple meeting.
Does it actually work yet? I tried it a few months ago, and it took 30 minutes just to load, and barely was able to do anything at all on then brand new iMac. I wrote it off as still beta for a reason (not ready yet).
30 minutes? Barely able to do anything? You've got to be kidding! I've been using it (NeoOffice / Open Office X11) for years as a viable substitute for MS Office. After the initial startup (MS cheats during bootup) which is still comfortably under 10 sec on a 2GHz Core Duo, its actually quite quick.
It also does a better job reading and writing files to various versions of MS Office better than MS Office does itself.
You must still be in beta...
Apple has such enormous potential in its hands with the iPhone and I do worry that its attitude towards the development community at the moment leaves a lot to be desired and could be its undoing Vs. Android et. al.
Dear Mr. Language Police,
Your sentence above is a run-on. Also, you should not capitalize Vs. in the middle of a sentence and the latin word et should not be followed by a period. Additionally, vs. is an abbreviation of versus that you incorrectly use where you seem to mean something like "at the hands of ...."
Well done AI, another propaganda article.
Why pull out a video on Ballmer from last year? What's it got to do with anything?
Well done AI, another propaganda article.
Ok, lets pull one out from last week then.
Dear Mr. Language Police,
Your sentence above is a run-on. Also, you should not capitalize Vs. in the middle of a sentence and the latin word et should not be followed by a period. Additionally, vs. is an abbreviation of versus that you incorrectly use where you seem to mean something like "at the hands of ...."
Touché
...It succeeded in spite of it because IBM gifted them with a monopoly in the PC market. ... For Ballmer to claim that it is naturally superior to one platform - one hardware manufacturer only reveals the depth of his misunderstanding.
Holy crap! Someone else who broke through the "Reality Distortion Field" and can see the true reason for Microsoft's fortune. Well said!
Let's also not forget that it was Steve Jobs who asked Bill Gates to create an office suite for the Mac, when Apple already had their own in house office suite written for the Lisa. Furthermore, Apple was coerced into allowing Microsoft to port the Macintosh Toolbox API to DOS, so they could create their own GUI based office suite. Could you imagine what the OS/office landscape would look like now if Steve never went to Microsoft and just ported "7/7" from the Lisa?
Anyway, back on subject...
I don't remember Bill Gates ever being so vocal about Apple? Ballmer comes across as being an envious, spiteful, half-wit, who's going to take his ball home, if the others won't let him win. I suppose he has to say some of those things to put up a front for the stock holders sake, but come on man! Does he not realize that Apple's marketing is going to hit at Windows, not because they hate Windows, but because Microsoft has the dominant share of the market, they're the biggest target. Comparing Apple to say, Linux would be dumb, who could relate to those ads?
The thing that really gets me is the weird "smart" phone marketing. Why is everyone ONLY comparing their new phones to the iPhone? It's RIM Vs. iPhone, Android vs. iPhone, Nokia vs. iPhone, T-Mobile vs. iPhone, Windows Mobile vs. iPhone, etc... Why not Android vs. RIM or Nokia vs. Windows Mobile? iPhone is not the biggest kid on the block here (although it could quite possibly the loudest). The only explanation for this behavior is the iPhone is the new standard and EVERYONE else is trying to get there, but at the exact same time, they are all trying to play down the iPhone's benefits and play up it's flaws. Microsoft was famous for this hypocrisy; creating FUD, while trying to play catch-up.
Microsoft expects Mac to do as poorly as iPhone
Ballmer similarly argued that Apple will fail to see further Mac share gains or make strides in the enterprise market because it won't license the Mac OS to third-party hardware vendors.
"Apple's a good company, I won't take anything away from them, but they have a certain kind of strategy," Ballmer said. "They believe in putting the hardware and software together, they don't believe in letting other people make it."
"I'm not saying there isn't a threat" he added. But if we "do our jobs right, there's really no reason Apple should get any footprint in the enterprise."
It's the high prices that keep Apple from growing out of its 5% niche of Mac faithfuls. If Steve Jobs waits any longer to lower prices drastically, he will be blamed for keeping Apple small when Apple could have grown its market share while Microsoft experienced a lukewarm reception for Vista.
The one man company is a formula for failure, especially if he is a one-man-knows-it-all type. If only Steve Jobs understood that much of business.
Does it actually work yet? I tried it a few months ago, and it took 30 minutes just to load, and barely was able to do anything at all on then brand new iMac. I wrote it off as still beta for a reason (not ready yet).
Try NeoOffice - http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php
NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X. Based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, NeoOffice has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office.
NeoOffice is one of the most stable office suites for Mac OS X. We have created an office suite that is adapted to the unique needs of Mac users by taking the features in Sun Microsystems' OpenOffice.org office suite and adding improvements
Indeed, you're certainly not the only one. As far as I can see, the "iPhone halo effect" has a much greater potential to get people to switch to Macs than the "iPod halo effect". This is a very exciting prospect. I only hope that Apple doesn't fuck it up by pissing off all the iPhone developers. The fact that the NDA prevents discussion about iPhone development really is ridiculous and I hope Apple sorts it out soon.
Correcion: Apple has pissed off a handful of very vocal, IMO extremely whiny developers. The tech media (including John Gruber unfotunately, whose site I really dig) of course is blowing it all out of proportion.
Fact is, money talks, BS walks, and the evidence suggests that the vast majority of devs are pretty OK with Apple and the App Store.
I was amazed to find that our Enterprise made the iphone available as a phone option!? Normally our organisation being a big one is slow to adopt new things but we had the iphone available very quickly (some pressure from the top I think).
From what I hear there been a lot of people requesting them now.
There's also an ongoing project looking at integrating Mac's into the enterprise and there's even talk about looking into iphone software development!?
I'm in software development myself and I can imagine a lot of enterprise mobile applications. Giving remote access to corporate employees on site for example. Development certainly looks more streamlines compared to windows mobile..
I think we may be seeing an iphone halo effect in the enterprise!?
I recently did a gig for Axel Springer Verlag in Berlin (Germany's largest newspaper publisher and Apple's largest corporate customer to date) and everyone in upper management got a free iPhone + contract at the event. Lucky bastiges :-)
There are a going to be a lot of companies switching over to the iPhone very soon, mark my words.
Just my speculation
It's the high prices that keep Apple from growing out of its 5% niche of Mac faithfuls. If Steve Jobs waits any longer to lower prices drastically, he will be blamed for keeping Apple small when Apple could have grown its market share while Microsoft experienced a lukewarm reception for Vista.
The one man company is a formula for failure, especially if he is a one-man-knows-it-all type. If only Steve Jobs understood that much of business.
1. I'm quite sure that Jobs understands a lot more about business than you do.
2. If it weren't for Jobs and his team, Apple would be dead by now. Period.
3. Who ever said that Apple wants to get as big as MS? If I had the choice between making goo-gobs of money efficiently (which is exactly what Apple is doing now) and doing everything I can just to obtain market share (look where that got Dell nowadays), I'd rather choose the former.
4. Don't blame Jobs because YOU can't afford a Mac.