“For many years, there have been two models of how to make computers and other digital devices. One is the component model, championed by Microsoft. The other is the end-to-end model, championed by Apple,” Walter S. Mossberg writes for The Wall Street Journal. “In the component model, many companies make hardware and software that run on a standard platform, creating inexpensive commodity devices that don’t always work perfectly together, but get the job done. In the end-to-end model, one company designs both the hardware and software, which work smoothly together, but the products cost more and limit choice.”
“In the first war between these models, the war for dominance of the personal-computer market, Microsoft’s approach won decisively. Aided by efficient assemblers like Dell, and by corporate IT departments employed to integrate the components, Microsoft’s component-based Windows platform crushed Apple’s end-to-end Macintosh platform,” Mossberg writes. “But in the post-PC era we’re in today, where the focus is on things like music players, game consoles and cellphones, the end-to-end model is the early winner. Tightly linking hardware, software and Web services propelled Apple to a huge success with its iPod. Microsoft, meanwhile, has struggled to make its component model work on these devices and, in a telling sign, is using the Apple end-to-end model itself in its Xbox game-console business. Now, Apple is working on other projects built on the same end-to-end model as the iPod: a media-playing cellphone and a home-media hub.”
“Even the Mac isn’t as closed as its critics charge. It’s still designed to work with Apple’s own operating system and software. But it can handle all the common files Windows uses, can network with Windows machines, and can use all of the common Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice. The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows. Heck, the newest Macs can even run Windows itself,” Mossberg writes. “You do get a choice of more software with Windows. And that’s great for hard-core gamers and users of corporate, or niche, software. But for mainstream users doing typical tasks, the Windows choice advantage is illusory. Mac users can choose among thousands of third-party programs, including multiple Web browsers, word processors and email programs. They can run Mac versions of popular software like Microsoft Office and the Firefox browser. How much more choice do you need? Microsoft is hedging its bets. It has, in effect, created a little Apple inside Microsoft with the Xbox group. The Xbox team shunned Windows and wrote its own operating system and user interface, and built its own hardware. (The new Xbox was even developed using Macintosh computers.)”
Full article here.
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Related article:
Apple was right all along: vertical market quality trumps horizontal market woes – April 30, 2006
Mossberg, you OLD COOT!!!
If only Bungie was not bought out by Microsoft. Halo would be free!!!
Halo would be free. Who will pay their bills??
speaking of the xbox team… I wonder what the market of new generation game counsels will look like once sony gets in…
To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft dominates the game counsel market after a few years (namely the xbox 360)…
And if the xbox team is successful with the new xbox, what can it do with a music player….
just thinking out loud, is all…. yet for some reason people are going to flame at me about this.
meh.
Tell me. Why does Apple keep getting getting good news and the stock goes nowhere? I do not get it.
I see only an upside for the company and its business.
Is it that the stock analysists all use Windows and they just do not get it? This is too simple an explination.
Mossberg right on the money again.
Best thing for Microsoft would be to make the XBox their CPU and OS. Then make Office run on it. I am sure all the Windows fan boys would love that.
You don’t know the history of end-to-end models. I do.
What is with that XBox thing anyway? I mean, come on!
Sweet Mac of My-eeee-ine!
Rolling FUD gathers no Mossberg.
“inexpensive commodity devices that don’t always work perfectly together, but get the job done”
Isnt this sorta contradictory?
All I”l say is the kind of detail oriented work i do makes me glad that one detail I don’t have to worry about is if my computer is going to work.
“Tell me. Why does Apple keep getting getting good news and the stock goes nowhere? I do not get it.”
Stock price has many more factors. Some dimwit actuall said the stock went down yesterday because of the botched Red Hot Chili Pepper ticket deal. Yeah right.
Try, the Fed raised interest rates again, and the price of oil is going up again. There’s your stock stagnation right there. Has nothing to do with what a guy like Mossberg says, no matter how true it is.
Mossberg says Apple is working on a cell phone and a media hub. Does he know this for sure or is he just speculating?
“But for mainstream users doing typical tasks, the Windows choice advantage is illusory. “
This is a critical point that a lot of basic consumers don’t understand (when they go to their local big-box retailer, all they see are Win boxes so I’m not bashing Joe/Jane user). Everything the “average” home user needs can be done on a Mac AND is pretty much pre-installed. Web browsing, email, digital photo processing/organizing, music burning, playing DVDs and other media etc. etc. The only thing that does not come bundled (at least not anymore – AppleWorks) is a basic word processing program (TextEdit really won’t cut it for the average consumer). Other than that, you’re set. On the PC side you get a bunch of cripple-ware loaded on your machine that you don’t need or even want and the kicker for me is that almost every PC maker out there today does not sell their machines with the OS disk. That’s crazy. They either have a recovery partition or a recovery disk, but no REAL OS disk. I suppose this cuts down on tech support, because they won’t have to walk people through reinstalling their OS. They just say “Boot the recovery disk” or hold down FXX while booting and it will restore to the factory setup. That just plain blows.
I’m not a gamer, but as far as the Xbox goes I have heard from many that MS got that right. I hear Xbox Live works great and is very well integrated into the whole Xbox experience.
Big Boy,
He means Free as in Freedom, not Beer…
Not entirely correct, Mossberg. Apple’s model may provide them with some limited strategic advantage, but this is not prima fascia evidence that Microsoft’s model is fundamentally flawed. If Microsoft had effective leadership, there is no reason not to suppose that Microsoft could produce certain innovative and elegant software. Mossberg fails to understand that the human mind and imagination, commitment to excellence, and hard work determine success more than simple theoretical constructs of corporate taxonomy. Seriously, if Microsoft had genuinely devoted itself to the purpose and the mission of developing the best OS in the world there is no reason it couldn’t happen. Unfortunately, internal bias, ineptitude, intransigence, and negligence got in the way.
Do you disagree? Consider this, everything remains the same at Apple Computer except Gates and Ballmer are now running the company. Do you honestly think that Apple would thrive under the auspices and direction of these two?
maczealot — You sort of countered your own point.
In a cutting-edge, truly innovative business sector, you need someone leading a company who is . . . cutting-edge and truly innovative.
Jobs is that person. Gates and Ballmer never were.
They were in fact never anything more than above-average businessmen, whilst those individuals in charge of Apple at the time (Jobs wasn’t there) . . . weren’t.
We hear you loud and clear.
Funky Dunky:
Read my post again, I think that your comprehension is wanting. I specifically argued that effective leadership is more important a factor in determining the fate and success of companies than organizational structures. How could I have made this more simple for you to understand?
Does anyone remember the halcyon days of Apple Computer after John Scully manned the helm and Steve jobs was unceremoniously shown the door in 1985? I don’t. I think that most would agree that a lot has changed at Apple since 1997 when Jobs returned.
It’s intuitively obvious, effective leadership is fundamental to innovation and product development. Apple doesn’t have a birth right to success and never did. It takes insight, perception, hard work, and commitment to the consumer to achieve and maintain excellence and commercial relevance. Fortunately for Apple and the rest of us Mac users, Jobs was savvy enough not to allow Microsoft’s failures to dull the competitive and inquisitive spirit in Cupertino.
The Stock Market is fsuked up. It’s the Market that has driven up the cost of crude oil for instance, based on what! Greed I say! Some commodities should not be left to the vagaries of the Market. Two base emotions govern the Market, greed and fear. Humanity at its best. (sarcasm intended)
MacZealot,
I think you meant Prima Facie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prima_facie
I rest My case
Maczealot – Full of yourself much?
I think the point being made by the poster was that at the time BOTH Apple and Microsoft had what could kindly and somewhat objectively be called sub-par “leadership”, yet Microsoft still bested Apple in the computer/OS market space. This therefore proves that — depending on your competitor — sub-par can still be “good enough”.
But just saying that if Microsoft “genuinely devoted itself” that it too could have produced the “best OS” (a subjective assessment) in the world or “certain” innovative software is not an argument based on logic. The odds, in fact, would almost always have been against it. This is a datapoint correlated with statistical probability analysis and said metric for success has almost never been in favor of an organization as multi-tentacled and corpulent as Microsoft had quickly become.
Of course, through the cloud of egotism emanating from your cranium it’s not surprising that you missed this since the information wasn’t of a sufficiently prima facie nature.
MacZealot
Let’s see, Mossberg says: “In the component model, many companies make hardware and software…that don’t always work perfectly together, but get the job done. In the end-to-end model, one company designs both the hardware and software, which work smoothly together….”
component model vs end-to-end model
Mossberg also says: “But in the post-PC era we’re in today, where the focus is on things like music players, game consoles and cellphones, the end-to-end model is the early winner. Tightly linking hardware, software and Web services propelled Apple to a huge success with its iPod.”
post-PC era = digital appliances
So the component model isn’t good at making digital appliances.
Then Mosberg goes on to suggest the Mac works well as a digital PC appliance: “But for mainstream users doing typical tasks, the Windows choice advantage is illusory.” “How much more choice do you need?” In other words, a Mac, out of the box, with iLife, iWork and .Mac is almost the perfect digital PC appliance for the average user.
You say: “if Microsoft had genuinely devoted itself to the purpose and the mission of developing the best OS in the world there is no reason it couldn’t happen.”
True, they might have made the best OS, but they wouldn’t have made the best digital PC appliance as they don’t make the hardware and don’t control the .Mac equivalent web services in the component model.
Switching management teams is an interesting, but useless mind game. Gates/Balmer are the proponents for the component model and would introduce 4 versions of OS X, a Performa fog of Mac computers, and license OS X to Dell. Gates/Balmer would turn Apple in to Microsoft. They would destroy the “simple theoretical constructs of corporate taxonomy” or the end-to-end model that actually exists at Apple.
I’d say that using the component model for digital PC appliances is a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. There are simply too many people and conflicting agendas within the Microsoft & Partners System to be effective in the post-PC/digital appliance era.
Both Microsoft and Apple have emloyees that exhibit “human mind and imagination, commitment to excellence, and hard work.” In the component model, you can’t use these admirable qualities to produce an excellent digital appliance since you’re just a component. In the end-to-end model, you do it all and produce an Xbox or an iPod.
No management team pushing the component model would succeed at Apple or in the digital appliance business.
The personal management failings you mention – “internal bias, ineptitude, intransigence, and negligence” – can just as easily be applied to Jobs – the one button mouse, the Cube, the quest for cool products or else, AppleWorks.
The business model makes a difference. Ordering from a vast selection of books at Amazon works. Ordering your routine groceries over the internet from a local store doesn’t work so well.
Mossberg spends most of his time pulling his pud. I bet most people in this forum could write more insightful articles than him, and that’s really saying something.
I personally don’t buy the fact that one company’s going to make the greatest digital camera and the best piece of wordprocessing software and the best image editing application and the best scanner and the best digital media hub and the best home finance app and the best cellphone and the best pda and the best (insert whatever app and peripipheral you’d like here)in the universe.
A company can be good at a great many things, but not EVERYTHING. So in the end the model of multiple innovators working on a common platform is going to win out.
>No management team pushing the component model would succeed at Apple or in the digital appliance business.
Right that’s why most of American homes have combined HDTV screen-VCR-5.1 Sound system-game console-PC-DVR-CD-DVD Player-Cable Boxes in their living rooms rather then separate components.
Hang on a minute, now I write it out, that sounds exactly the opposite of how things really work.
Did Mossberg just call the user of a Mac a mediocre and non-professional user?
“You do get a choice of more software with Windows. And that’s great for hard-core gamers and users of corporate, or niche, software“
OK, hard-core gamers prefer PCs for now. Upgradability does play a role there, as well as availability on day 1 when a new game comes out.
But for the rest a Mac is just as productive as any Windows PC, ain’t it?
Post PC era? That’s rich. Last I checked, PCs are aren’t at an end of any kind of “era”. And Apple software suffers the same symptoms as Microsoft, or any other developer. How quickly we forget OS X 10.0-1, or Aperture 1.0.
Think before you speak:
You should follow your own advice.
“This (inadequate leadership) therefore proves that — depending on your competitor — sub-par can still be “good enough”.
Sub par products are by definition inadequate and are not “good enough”. The fact that a one product is not as terribly bad as another does not make it better than what it could or should be. With your own narrow-minded assessment of product quality OS X would be barely better than Windows.
“Just saying that if Microsoft “genuinely devoted itself” that it too could have produced the “best OS” (a subjective assessment) in the world or “certain” innovative software is not an argument based on logic.”
Are you implying that OS X developed from people who were not “genuinely devoted” to the task of developing the best OS possible? Or do you think that pure chance and serendipity determine product development and not obvious intent and effort? Think, for a moment. Apple converted OS X from PPC to the Intel chip. Hypothetically, Microsoft could have developed an Intel-based OS similar to OS X. Another thing. Do you honestly think that OS X security is “subjective”? You should use your objective mathematical skills to tally the actual number of OS X viruses compared to Windows viruses.
“The odds, in fact, would almost always have been against it. This is a datapoint correlated with statistical probability analysis and said metric for success has almost never been in favor of an organization as multi-tentacled and corpulent as Microsoft had quickly become.”
Since when does a single “datapoint” mean anything statistically? “Statistical probability analysis”? Is there any other type of probability that isn’t statistically based? Apple makes computers, monitors, software (of various flavors), iPods, runs iTunes and appears to have many “tentacles”, yet seems to be doing well as a company. So, what exactly were you attempting to communicate, except your lack of reasoning and understanding of statistics?
“Of course, through the cloud of egotism emanating from your cranium it’s not surprising that you missed this since the information wasn’t of a sufficiently prima facie nature.”
An insult as a tag line does not necessarily add any substance to your already poor attempts of developing a sound argument. I suppose that your lack of reasoning requires all the help you can muster even if it is unimpressively practical.
Ziggybop:
Microsoft’s Xbox has done fairly well for a company that started as a designer of OS’s only. Origami was a bust, so explain how Xbox was successful and Origami was not.
I wasn’t arguing that the end-to-end model for an appliance drive company was not a useful or significant model for Apple. I was presenting the point that Apple’s leadership was able to use this model to be successful. If Apple’s leadership was a poor as Microsoft’s it is doubtful that Apple would be as successful as it is today regardless of the model used.
“Switching management teams is an interesting, but useless mind game. Gates/Balmer are the proponents for the component model and would introduce 4 versions of OS X, a Performa fog of Mac computers, and license OS X to Dell. Gates/Balmer would turn Apple in to Microsoft. They would destroy the “simple theoretical constructs of corporate taxonomy” or the end-to-end model that actually exists at Apple.”
Certainly your grand prophecy how Ballmer and Gates would destroy Apple is a “mind game” itself. Now answer this, which was the part of my argument that you failed to comprehend, “If Gates and Ballmer were in charge of Apple and adhered to the end-to-end model, would you bet your last dime that Apple would be as successful with Gates and Ballmer as with Jobs et al?”
Does this help you?
So the Xbox is a great example of MS innovation.
A device where they got it right?
I don’t think so.
They are successful only because they have MS Office and Windows profit behind them. It’s easy to make the perfect product if you don’t have to make any money on it. Xbox losses to date are in the neighborhood of 350 million. They lose hundreds of dollars on every box they sell.
This is an example of MS ability to do the whole end to end product? Heck, anyone could design anything if they didn’t have to make a profit on it
pr:
Good call, I should have better proof read my text. Did you understand the rest of my post, or did my grammatical error limit your ability to comprehend or confuse your ability to perceive my point?
“Heck, the newest Macs can even run Windows itself”
“You do get a choice of more software with Windows”
So, if it is both, how can these statements both be true? The more software choice argument died the day Boot Camp arrived. STOP THE FUD!
1) Macs are more expensive.
Compared to what?
2) Macs can’t run as much software.
Check out Boot Camp on the Intel Macs.
3) Macs are just as susceptible to virus attacks.
Prove it.
4) Macs are proprietary tying you to one vendor.
Run Linux or Windows just like you can on other personal computers. The hardware except for the motherboard and ROM are industry standard.
iPod works on a Windows PC.
Apple uses same Processor as Windows PC.
Well I’m a bit late, but what the hell. A few people are getting steemed up, but are nissing the point.
Microsoft won the old OS war because of a better business model (obviously). The M$ business model allowed (and still does) M$ the ability to put a PC with Windows on it in every home. Why? Because they are willing to licence their OS to all manufacturers willing to pay the randsom.
Even today, Apple, a single but very successful company, cannot even meet demand to fill 5% of the market. That is why a crappy fourth rate Windows IMMEDIATELY took first place and smashed Apple in the OS market.
Clearly, M$ did and still does have in many ways a better business model for its OS business. M$ won on ability to meet demand, that is all.
But that’s besides the point. We use macs because they are better. What’s sublime about something like tiny iPods, is Apple can produce the better end to end customer experience and (almost) meet demand for these gadgets. That combination punch is a knockout.
“Nissing” the point. Wonder what that means.
Gates and Ballmer never were. They were in fact never anything more than above-average businessmen […]
Ugh. The average businessman must really suck then.
Tell me. Why does Apple keep getting getting good news and the stock goes nowhere? I do not get it.
I tell you. You’re a fucking idiot, that’s why.
First time i’ve heard windows referred to as ‘niche’
Maczealot, you are a tool and your “arguments” are as specious and full of holes as your head must be.
I believe ziggybop and Think before you Speak offer a much more compelling treatise.
Microsoft’s biggest problem is backwards compatibility. They are striving to keep it but all of that legacy code is their Achilles Heel. The legacy code brings with it too many security vulnerabilities. The legacy ports in the hardware retains too many compatibility problems.
If they would design a new OS from the ground up, leave behind legacy hardware and run legacy software in a Classic like enclosed sandbox, they would make Macs redundant.
Don’t bet the farm on that ever happening.
Pud, you’re a proponent for component home entertainment systems. But how does your description of a home entertainment system come anywhere near to describing a mainstream/average home? See next paragraph.
Reality Check, you say: “PCs are aren’t at an end of any kind of “era.”” Well, the PC eras go something like this: hobbyist, first adopters, wide use in specialized fields, common business/household commodity. For a long time, home users asked “why should I ever get a computer?” Now PCs are in the VCR era of usefulness. Gotta have one, but still don’t trust it. We’re fast approching the telephone era of PCs: “It just works.”
Pud, your home entertainment system is in the era of “wide use by those with specialized knowledge” or those who can pay for someone else to set it up. Apple, using the end-to-end model, is expected to come up with the hardware, software and Web services needed to move home entertainment systems into the next era.
MacZealot, you ask: “Origami was a bust, so explain how Xbox was successful and Origami was not.”
Simple. Mossberg explains it: “Microsoft…is using the Apple end-to-end model itself in its Xbox game-console business.” Origami is the classic component model: Microsoft makes the Origami software, various manufacturers make the boxes and call them UPCs (ultra portable computers) or UMPCs (ultra mobile PCs) but not “Microsoft Origamis.”
Then you say: “If Apple’s leadership was a poor as Microsoft’s it is doubtful that Apple would be as successful as it is today regardless of the model used.” First you’d have to define poor leadership. Microsoft went from zero to gargantuan within half a generation. They must have had some good management along the way. Just to keep up with deliveries.
It’s a mind game to ask these “what if” questions. they can’t be proved one way or the other.
More mind games. You go on to ask: ““If Gates and Ballmer were in charge of Apple and adhered to the end-to-end model, would you bet your last dime that Apple would be as successful with Gates and Ballmer as with Jobs et al?” Well, “and adhered to the end-to-end model” wasn’t in your original post.
But to play along, in my opinion, Gates/Balmer would have used the management talents they ably demonstrated to insert the Apple end-to-end model into Big Business using Apple’s initial Multi-Plan spreadsheet monopoly, buying up competitors, restricting access to data and we’d all be living with an AppleGates monopoly of four OS versions, floppy drives and DIN connectors attached to ugly Apple II/2006 boxes, and a command line interface. Digital photos, music and video? What’s that all about?
> your home entertainment system is in the era of “wide use by those with specialized knowledge”
Actually I don’t think so. People go to Best Buy, Circuit City etc. They buy the thing they want and plug it into the other things they own using simple, standardized, often color coded cables. It all just works.
Do you think anyone really expects to have a “compatibility” issue hooking a Tivo DVR or Denon DVD up to a Sony TV? I don’t think so.
Do you think there’s a market for an “all in one” which does everything you ever wanted, costs as much as a small car, but takes the “complexity” away?
Do I really want to buy a new “all in one” HDTV and DVD player or AV reciever just because I want to upgrade to a new game console it contains? Do I want to have to buy a 2nd rate Blu-ray player because that’s all my vendor sells?
Or are interoperable components better? you tell me…
p.s the VCR is dead technology, at least to anyone who’s ever owned a DVR.