“Apple has made some marketing mistakes that mirror those made by Republicans in the presidential race, says columnist Rob Enderle. The blunders will come back to bite both of them, but it will take a little longer for the impact to be felt in Cupertino than in Washington,” Rob Enderle writes for TechNewsWorld.
“Microsoft just announced Windows 7, and as a pre-beta product, it is very impressive, largely because Apple’s negative campaign against Windows Vista focused Microsoft more than I’ve ever seen a complex company focused. There is a rule here in the Silicon Valley, and that is that focusing Microsoft on you generally ends badly — and Microsoft actually hasn’t been focused on Apple since the early 90s,” Enderle writes.
“In the U.S. election, the negative campaigning probably has done more to motivate the Democratic base and get moderate Republicans to switch sides than anything the Democrats could have done alone. Apple’s campaign has truly pissed off Microsoft, and Windows 7 is that company’s way of saying, ‘Steve Jobs can kiss my a**,’ or more simply, ‘enough,'” Enderle writes.
“Apple believes that only Apple should have the freedom to choose; customers have to accept Apple’s choice, it’s partially the result of Apple’s “lock in” policy, an historic problem for Microsoft as well. Windows 7 effectively reverses a bad policy and will pass more control over to the users, OEMs, and IT managers than has ever before been granted. This will allow the proliferation of unique user experiences like the HP TouchSmart and products that improve on the Apple integrated experience but run Windows Applications,” Enderle writes.
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s watch BBC News as Rob Enderle demonstrates “multi-touch”* in Windows 7 on an HP “TouchSmart” PC:
See the full video via BBC News here.
*Multi-touch™ is a trademark of Apple Inc.
MacDailyNews Note: The BBC’s so-called “Independent Pundit” Rob Enderle has worked for and with companies such as Microsoft and HP and also currently sits on HP’s advisory council.
Enderle continues, “One sustaining advantage that the Mac platform has is the ease in which Mac users can move from an old Mac to a new one. While migrating from Windows to a Mac is about as ugly as you can get, once on the Mac the process is comparatively painless. This is generally why Apple enjoys a higher customer churn rate than any other PC vendor, and it contributes to their higher margins and customer loyalty.”
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s “customer churn rate” for the Mac is extremely low. Not high. In other words, once you go Mac, you never go back. There’s a reason for that: Apple Macs offer a superior personal computing experience versus Microsoft Windows running on random box assemblers’ cobbled together PCs.
Enderle continues, “The Democratic Party and Microsoft have always been larger but less focused than their counterparts. For the Republicans or Apple to actually fix their competitors’ focus problems will likely be seen, in hindsight, as a really stupid thing to do. Apple would have been better off to fix its crappy laptop keyboards (seriously — compare a ThinkPad and MacBook keyboard) and figure out how to do touchscreens on PCs (multi-touch track pads are just lame compared to things like the iPhone and TouchSmart). And had the Republicans done their homework and cleaned house, they might have won.”
Full article – Think before You Click™ – here.
Enderle’s shroomtastic alternate universe is as upside-down and backwards as Windows’ user interface.
If he really believes that “generally” Mac users continue to buy Macs due to ease of migration, that universally-lauded MacBook keyboards are “crappy,” that “Windows 7” is anything more than a renamed Vista service pack, and that “Gorilla Arm“-causing vertical touchscreens on desktop PCs are something that Apple would want to emulate, then his ability to correctly analyze anything must be doubted.
Apple Macs are growing at a rate much faster than Windows PC sales. Those “Get a Mac” commercials are some “marketing mistake.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Simply Aghast” for the heads up.]
