Broader strategy seen in Apple's interface unification
One of the biggest take-aways from Monday's Apple developer conference was the Mac maker's progress in unifying its user interface across multiple product lines, according to American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu.
The horizontal integration, which remains a work-in-progress, will enable users who are familiar with one Apple product to learn another relatively quickly, Wu told clients in a research note Tuesday morning.
At the same time, the analyst said he sees the company's decision to release Safari for Windows "as a strategic and smart move in giving Windows users a closer taste of the Mac experience in addition to iPod+iTunes and iPhone."
"We believe this will ultimately attract more switchers to the Apple franchise," he added.
In general, however, Wu joined fellow analysts over at PiperJaffray in calling Apple's Leopard-related announcements and secret features "somewhat underwhelming."
"Mac OS X Leopard will incorporate Boot Camp as a standard feature," he wrote. "While we believe this is positive in supporting Windows on a Mac, is it not a surprise and we believe the user community and investors were hoping that Apple would offer full virtual machine capability, allowing one to run Mac and Windows simultaneously."
Still, Wu remains bullish on Apple and its four-pronged product strategy, reiterating a "Buy" rating and $145 price target.
In his note to clients, the AmTech analyst also spoke optimistically about Electronic Art's return to the Mac gaming market.
"We find this development significant as the world's largest game developer is once again committing to the Mac platform," he wrote. "We believe other game developers could follow."
The horizontal integration, which remains a work-in-progress, will enable users who are familiar with one Apple product to learn another relatively quickly, Wu told clients in a research note Tuesday morning.
At the same time, the analyst said he sees the company's decision to release Safari for Windows "as a strategic and smart move in giving Windows users a closer taste of the Mac experience in addition to iPod+iTunes and iPhone."
"We believe this will ultimately attract more switchers to the Apple franchise," he added.
In general, however, Wu joined fellow analysts over at PiperJaffray in calling Apple's Leopard-related announcements and secret features "somewhat underwhelming."
"Mac OS X Leopard will incorporate Boot Camp as a standard feature," he wrote. "While we believe this is positive in supporting Windows on a Mac, is it not a surprise and we believe the user community and investors were hoping that Apple would offer full virtual machine capability, allowing one to run Mac and Windows simultaneously."
Still, Wu remains bullish on Apple and its four-pronged product strategy, reiterating a "Buy" rating and $145 price target.
In his note to clients, the AmTech analyst also spoke optimistically about Electronic Art's return to the Mac gaming market.
"We find this development significant as the world's largest game developer is once again committing to the Mac platform," he wrote. "We believe other game developers could follow."
Comments
Bad idea.
Meanwhile, Phil Schiller was very clear that Apple's solution was Boot Camp and Apple even promoted Parallels on its web site.
Just goes to show how pure speculation takes on a life of its own and causes expectations to form, even when all evidence is to the contrary. Anyway, I am glad that everything is clear on this point now so that these analysts can stop yapping about it.
While he may have gotten the physical situation wrong, his financial predictions have been good for the last few years.
This was a very underwhelming intro by Jobs. I was expecting some major information.
What happened to those ten secret features? We had maybe five that were not really all that major. The others we already knew about.
No information about the underpinnings of the OS. No word at all about ZFS. Nothing.
No hardware at all. This convention has taken on a look of a Macworld since the one here in New York/Boston has gone. We do expect to see something.
I never understood where this idea came from that Apple was going to put virtualization into Leopard. Not only was there the silly DigiTimes claim that Apple was delaying Leopard for this reason, but Wu and other financial analysts were saying the same thing.
Meanwhile, Phil Schiller was very clear that Apple's solution was Boot Camp and Apple even promoted Parallels on its web site.
Just goes to show how pure speculation takes on a life of its own and causes expectations to form, even when all evidence is to the contrary. Anyway, I am glad that everything is clear on this point now so that these analysts can stop yapping about it.
Unfortunately, everyone was saying it, even many posters here.
We simply can't take anything Apple says as being true until the time comes. Often, they deliberately mislead.
Personally, I've absolutely no desire or need to run Windows so I'm with the 95% or so who haven't downloaded Bootcamp.
...This was a very underwhelming intro by Jobs. I was expecting some major information.
What happened to those ten secret features? We had maybe five that were not really all that major. The others we already knew about.
No information about the underpinnings of the OS. No word at all about ZFS. Nothing.
No hardware at all. This convention has taken on a look of a Macworld since the one here in New York/Boston has gone. We do expect to see something.
I totally agree! WWDC 2007 = Very underwhelming. No ZFS
WTF?!
What is Steve Jobs thinking?
Where is ZFS?
Is Safari-on-Windows suppose to be one of Leopard's "Top Secret" features?
Do I really have to live with stupid street-light buttons on OS X's windows till 10.6 comes out?
Do I really have to choke on the ugly blue, bubbly 3D-want-a-be scroll bars?
WTF?!
Underwhelming is right
What happened to those ten secret features? We had maybe five that were not really all that major. The others we already knew about.
No information about the underpinnings of the OS. No word at all about ZFS. Nothing.
Agree with you about the underpinnings. I would have like to hear more about any work done on the guts of the Finder. A lot of the potential fixes to the Finder are not exactly keynote address material, but they are important ones. An end to spinning beachballs, faster refreshing in list view, greater responsiveness overall. The list goes on and on. I probably will use things like stacks, Cover Flow, and Quick View on occasion, and I understand that Jobs will focus on these things for the keynote, but I am really more interested in seeing low-level fixes.
We simply can't take anything Apple says as being true until the time comes. Often, they deliberately mislead.
True, but in this case I couldn't see that Apple would get mileage out of stomping on existing solutions.
Hope away... it never made ANY sense. Why would Apple re-invent what other companies already do well, and toss out Boot Camp that Apple themselves do well? Analysts are disappointed that something highly unlikely did not happen?
And do people really think that a developer event is the only chance Apple has to release new hardware?
I can understand uninformed users not grasping what WWDC is and turning wild speculation into hyped expectation. But professionals should know better.
Do I really have to live with stupid street-light buttons on OS X's windows till 10.6 comes out?
Do I really have to choke on the ugly blue, bubbly 3D-want-a-be scroll bars?
Nope, just turn on the graphite Appearance in System Preferences and you're sorted.
What happened to those ten secret features?
Where the hell did you get that promise? Suggest you start posting facts before you make a comment.
We simply can't take anything Apple says as being true until the time comes. Often, they deliberately mislead.
More often then not, it is you and your like that is deliberately misleading. In fact it is more like outright lying.
Underwhelming? True, but only for the small minded. I don't hear any of the 4,000 plus attending developers expressing you views. Or are you calling us doorknob?
Nope, just turn on the graphite Appearance in System Preferences and you're sorted.
Are you serious? It's not so much the colors I hate.. it's the whole design of the scroll bars and window buttons. They just suck however you slice it
Are you serious?
I thought the winking smiley might have given you the hint that I was being tongue-in-cheek.
I thought the winking smiley might have given you the hint that I was being tongue-in-cheek.
Oh, good.. I'm just so pissed at the underwhelming-ness and ZFS-lessness from the World Wide Disappointing Conference that I didn't notice the winking smiley. Thanks though
This was a very underwhelming intro by Jobs. I was expecting some major information.
No word at all about ZFS. Nothing.
No hardware at all. This convention has taken on a look of a Macworld since the one here in New York/Boston has gone. We do expect to see something.
If anything, it is nothing like a Macworld in that the focus was the OS and development of applications. The ZFS red-herring was not of Apple's doing- that came from Sun. Much of the expectations came from rumours outside of the Apple sphere, as they usually do. The issue with all this rumour mongering and hype is that people actually get to think that a lot of the speculation is, or should be, FACT! And then there is all manner of hand-wringing when this or that feature is absent.
It really makes no difference if all that crap is confined to these types of forums but sadly, even the analysts get caught up in it, partly because they, too, created it and they are miffed at not seeing their "valuable" predictions come true. This certainly hurts Apple shares, as one sees the results in the inevitable let-down show up on NASDAQ immediately.
It would be nice if these "professionals" at least behaved, well, professional. Yes, I know, it is too much to ask as there is an Apple cult (not the fan-boys) that really does have a RDF, far beyond the help of psychotropics and way exceeding anything the SJ has ever been accused of.
It's quite painful to watch the angst it generates, since it is all self-inflicited.
Agree with you about the underpinnings. I would have like to hear more about any work done on the guts of the Finder. A lot of the potential fixes to the Finder are not exactly keynote address material, but they are important ones. An end to spinning beachballs, faster refreshing in list view, greater responsiveness overall. The list goes on and on. I probably will use things like stacks, Cover Flow, and Quick View on occasion, and I understand that Jobs will focus on these things for the keynote, but I am really more interested in seeing low-level fixes.
He obviously has to focus on the flashy, showy stuff rather than the everyday stuff. We'll have to wait for Siracusa, Gruber etc to pull apart the new Finder to finally see if we can consign FTFF to the trash can of history.
I can't say I'm happy with an iTunes interface though. It's their most suckiest interface. What happened to tabbed Finder windows?
I'm just glad they've decided to keep column view and it looks like they've sorted out network shares too. It scares me that my SE/30 with OS 7.5.5 is better at sharing and easier to use than OSX.
"we believe the user community and investors were hoping that Apple would offer full virtual machine capability, allowing one to run Mac and Windows simultaneously."
Hope away... it never made ANY sense. Why would Apple re-invent what other companies already do well, and toss out Boot Camp that Apple themselves do well? Analysts are disappointed that something highly unlikely did not happen?
And do people really think that a developer event is the only chance Apple has to release new hardware?
I can understand uninformed users not grasping what WWDC is and turning wild speculation into hyped expectation. But professionals should know better.
I never thought that Apple adding virtualization ala Parallels would be a bad idea.
Not so much because of the other developers being hurt, but because if it were too easy, AND on every machine, then it could affect Mac software development.
As for the WWDC not having hardware, I have to disagree with you here.
We saw no hardware at Macworld. we saw no hardware at WWDC. Just where exactly are we supposed to see hardware?
We have ALWAYS seen computer relared hardware from Apple at Macworld. We have been seeing hardware at the WWDC recently.
There is NO reason not to show hardware at WWDC, and every reason to.
Even developers like to see new hardware, and it gives them a good feeling that the platform is moving forward.
Most new software is bought by people buying new machines. New models mean more sales, which means more sales for them as well.
Where the hell did you get that promise? Suggest you start posting facts before you make a comment.
Perhaps you should start paying attention to what is going around around you.
Jobs said that. I think that anyone here can tell you that.