“Through its success in recent years, Apple has set the bar high for consumer devices. Now, various companies have products in the works whose sole purpose is to take market share away from Apple, by matching what it does well and exploiting its weaknesses,” Rob Enderle writes for TechNewsWorld.
MacDailyNews Take: Just. Plain. Stupid. Of course companies are looking at Apple’s successes and trying to emulate them, but if the “sole purpose” of these companies’ products are to “take market share away from Apple,” then they’re in trouble.
Enderle continues, “Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been meeting with vendors all over the country that range from those that build PCs to those that build tools and parts, to those that build back-end solutions. One common message has come through. They all are targeting Apple as the company whose performance they most want to beat. This has more implications for those who don’t currently buy Apple products than — at least near term — it has to do with Apple fans. Regardless, the projects are focused on learning what Apple does well, and what it sucks at, and then creating products that are significantly better.”
MacDailyNews Take: The man can barely write.
Enderle continues, “For well over a decade, I’ve used Apple both as an example of how to do things right and how to do them wrong. For most of this time, it has been more effective as a negative example because the companies I advise viewed Apple as a firm always on the cusp of going out of business. Over the last year this has changed dramatically, and suddenly Apple is the company that is more of an example of how to do things right than wrong and the result will be some amazing advancements in user experience.”
MacDailyNews Take: For well over a decade, Apple simply has not been “always on the cusp of going out of business.” They just haven’t. Any company thinking this way has to be run by idiots, but that is self-evident, of course, as they already employ Rob Enderle as an advisor. However, as rare as it may be, Enderle can still manage to happily surprise; he actually seems to understand that all of these companies trying to copy Apple will lead to “some amazing advancements in user experience” for everyone. In honor of this miracle, our headline is a pure gift to Rob. But, the question remains: Why buy a poor copy (or even a halfway decent copy) when you have have the original?
Enderle continues, “The change is pronounced, and it ranges from devices like Intel’s new MID (mobile Internet device) platform to as-yet unreleased MP3/video players (some of which are better than the nano but priced like the Shuffle)…
MacDailyNews Take: Define “better.” By not doing so, your sentence is devoid of meaning.
Enderle continues, “…laptops, desktops and monitors. Apple is suddenly influencing a broad range of products that aren’t even in its space including appliances, TVs, cable set-top boxes and automotive interiors. My friends, we are about to be pounded to death, with a smile on our faces, with Apple-influenced offerings.”
“On the PC side, and I can’t yet name the vendors, there is a massive push to eliminate the stickers, crapware and contract language on top, on the screen and on the bottom of premium products,” Enderle writes. “In the fourth quarter, one of the ways you’ll be able to determine if the PC OEM (original equipment manufacturer) is focused on improving your user experience will be just how hard it is to find anything stuck to the outside of your new laptop or desktop PC. We are talking about the emergence of entire lines of pristine products that don’t look like NASCAR advertising spin-offs.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, Rob, we know you enjoy reading MacDailyNews, but do you have to lift our lines, too? It’s ironic that in his article about derivative companies copying Apple, derivate Enderle copies us. We know you Mary read our article to you, Rob.
Enderle continues, “I’ve seen some of the coming products that potentially will out-Apple Apple… Thin, simple and sexy is the growing design trend with a huge push toward colors, which these OEMs believe will meet Apple where it is strongest (thin, simple, sexy) and beat Apple where it is weakest (choice/battery life/ports). However, this isn’t just about hardware and appearance — they are thinking about back-end services, user experience and working around Microsoft.”
MacDailyNews Take: Rob, where are they going to get their OS? They can’t develop it or — even if they somehow miraculously do develop their own OS — get it to catch on enough to matter. And don’t give us the failed dream of Linux on the desktop (despite years of hype, that simply is not happening – just look at the numbers). HP, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony, etc. can’t just go grab another mainstream OS off the shelf somewhere and slap it into their hardware. The box assemblers have made their beds, not they have to lie in them. They hitched their wagon to the rise of Microsoft WIndows during a time of tech ignorance and now, as people see the problems of implementing upside-down and backwards fake Macs the world over, they hunger for the real thing. And the real thing now even runs the fake thing faster than the box assembler’s products! Why would anyone buy a non-Mac, when a only a Mac can run all the world’s software? As more and more people ask themselves that question, Apple market share will continue to increase. And, as we Mac users who’ve tried to use WIndows know, once they really use a Mac, they will abandon Windows as soon as it’s possible for them to do so.
Enderle continues, “Many of the vendors get that the back end of the PC is one of the places that Apple currently has an advantage, but as good as iTunes is, anyone who has used it knows that it can be particularly irritating to a Windows user because of its Apple roots.”
MacDailyNews Take: Wha? Just another stupid, meaningless sentence to flow froth from Rob’s junky Acer. Mac OS X is Apples’ advantage that PC box assemblers cannot match. Not iTunes; which already runs on Windows PCs. Anyone trying to replace iTunes at this late date are tilting at windmills. And, which of the 100+ million Windows iTunes users are “particularly irritated” with the app “because of its Apple roots,” besides you, Rob?
Enderle continues, “This has been analyzed, quietly tested, and groups of largely ex-Apple people have come up with what I think will be something vastly better than iTunes. However, the details and the source for this offering are still months off and Microsoft will likely be as surprised as Apple will by the result.”
MacDailyNews Take: Puleeze.
Enderle continues, “Phoenix Technologies has been working quietly and acquiring a number of companies to build a solution that is being offered and adopted by OEMs specifically designed exceed with Windows many of Apple’s historic advantages. Ranging from virus resistance to synchronization between products to invisible migrations, each of the technologies Phoenix has quietly acquired appears to be secretly designed into the perfect Apple-beating tool set. Watch the future acquisitions this company makes closely because Apple appears to be its target, and its goal isn’t to just beat Apple but to provide an offering that will make obsolete Apple’s current advantages.”
MacDailyNews Take: We await with bated breath.
Enderle continues, “In what is the biggest cross-vendor effort of its type since the early ’90s, the OEMs are building and funding projects to ‘fix Windows.’ I can’t go into detail about who is doing what, but some are essentially efforts to find a way to recreate the Mac OS.”
MacDailyNews Take: We’re now so far into La-La Land that there may be no return. Microsoft has been trying and failing to “find a way to recreate the Mac OS” for decades now, but now some random low or no-margin hardware OEM is going to achieve the impossible in a fraction of the time? Deck to Rob: “We’re nowhere near full.”
Full article, Think Before You Click™, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "OctoberMac)" for the heads up.]
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