“I’m often asked: Why do I write columns about Apple Computer products? After all, the Macintosh has considerably less than 5% of the market for personal computers, and among the business computer users who are the core of BusinessWeek’s readership, the share is even lower. Add to that the fact that secretive Apple (AAPL ) is a difficult company to deal with — which would make it doubly easy to ignore its products,” writes Stephen H. Wildstrom in his article, “Why I Have to Write about Apple” for BusinessWeek’s Special Report, “Apple’s Strategic Shift.”
“That would also be very foolish of me, however. For all of its many faults, Apple is a fountain of innovation in the generally parched landscape of personal computing. That’s why its influence — what’s known as the tech industry as mindshare — vastly exceeds its market share,” writes Wildstrom.
Wildstrom looks at the impact Apple has already had on the music industry with its iPod and iTunes Music Store. Wildstrom covers Apple’s breakthrough portable Macs, the iBook and the PowerBook lines.
Wildstrom writes, “Microsoft gets grief from corporate buyers any time it tries to change anything in the Windows user interface, which has seen no significant enhancements since the introduction of Windows 95. And improvements in Windows are hobbled by the need to maintain compatibility with thousands of applications and accessories, some of them a decade or more old. Apple, however, declared a clean break when it introduced Mac OS X, its latest operating system — the software that controls the machine’s basic functions. At the time it was shipped, OS X could run on only a minority of the Macs in existence. But unlike the incremental improvements that have characterized the Windows operating system, OS X was a true breakthrough.”
Wildstrom writes, “There’s no reason its small market share should deny it either viability or influence. The personal-computer market is huge, after all. No one questions the viability of BMW, to take an example from another industry, or doubts its ability to influence car design, just because it has less than 3% of the car market… [while] relatively few of my readers will ever use the Apple products I write about. Yet as long as Apple continues to push the envelope and turn out remarkable products, I’ll continue to give them a degree of attention that vastly exceeds it minor market share.”
Full article here.
“There’s no reason its small market share should deny it either viability or influence. The personal-computer market is huge, after all. No one questions the viability of BMW, to take an example from another industry, or doubts its ability to influence car design, just because it has less than 3% of the car market.”
Exactly.
I think we also have to ask the question “How much bigger can Apple get without degrading its desire (and perhaps also ability) to innovate. Despite what Jobs might wish for Apple (and I have no idea what that is), how much success can they actually handle. Business history is strewn with successful small companies who floundered on their own size at some point. At the risk of being selfish, can we afford to have that happen to Apple?
There is a problem, however. Even though Apple hasn’t been above 10% market share for quite a while now, it cannot continue as it has been. Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller know this, and you are going to see a much more business oriented Apple Computer in the near future.
In the past, Apple could always rack up profits in high-margin markets it OWNED such as desktop publishing, music, video, etc. That is not the case today. Apple is rapidly losing market share in education, a market it held a 70% of in the not too distant past. Despite any personal dislike for Microsoft, Windows XP and P4 boxes have closed most of the performance gap.
With a narrowed performance gap, a price gap, and a ton of Windows-biased IT people in the corporate world, Apple has a tough job ahead of it. Apple cannot in it’s current form slug it out in the commodity desktop market, nor should it want to as margins are paper-thin. However, Apple has to reclaim the specialized computer market and with the G5, assault the workstation and low-end server market.
If Apple cannot crack these markets, OS X will be consigned to a small niche in the market, despite how good it is. We, as Mac users, are going to have to campaign within our respective workplaces to get Mac in the door. Most execs and IT types last impression of Mac OS is System 7x,8x, etc. The day of the Mac Evangelist has come again, and it’s your turn, and mine.
This guy is just rehashing old news, and he is not even gettings his facts right. Why do all newsos have to put little digs even in a positive article?
NoPC Zone is right, the Mac community need to become evangelists, but we need Apple to give us something that we can ram down the throats of the pc advocates who always come out with the same tired response to even the mention of a Mac.
Both our sysadmin and technical director have between them about an hour’s worth of experience using a Mac and that was on system 7. They seem to think that m$ windows is the only operating system worth worrying about, and that the Mac doesn’t have much software, is slower than a pc and isn’t a serious business machine. At the moment they wouldn’t even consider using a Mac let alone replacing the office machines with them.
Maybe the G5 is going to change all this misconception, I hope so.
nd what’s this crap about Office for Mac? Maybe people who can’t READ think its future is in doubt, but MS has assured the world SEVERAL times that they will continue to develop it.
He also mentiones “Adobe (ADBE ), Macromedia (MACR ), and Quark have shifted the emphasis of their development efforts to Windows.” which to the average reader sounds like they aren’t going to make Mac products any more.
On a side note, the Adobe Premier announcement last month had an interesting effect on consumers…many thought Adobe was dropping ALL MAC DEVELOPMENT FOR ALL THEIR PRODUCTS. Interesting how the spin of a headline can give the wrong impression.
Well I’ll be delivering a new computer lab this week with new eMacs, so hopefully the education share % will go up slightly
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Too bad he’s wrong, eh?
Mac OS X is very much the same kind of desktop OS we’ve had since the first Mac, and since Windows 3.0.
Windows XP introduced a true task-based UI that makes the computer easier to use. Unlike the Mac OS, all the good underpinning stuff–security, reliability, multi-processor support, etc.–was already in Windows by the time XP shipped.
Now which was the real innovation? XP.
This guy, like all Mac advocates, has blinders on.
The infamous BMW example is BS too, BTW.
Children.
BMW doesn’t market a car that runs on a different kind of gas. It doens’t include a stereo that plays a format of disc only BMW supplies. It doesn’t offer different types of tires you can only get from BMW or a select group of BMW-linked companies. BMWs aren’t forced to ride on different roads than other cars.
Most importantly, BMW doesn’t compete in a market where there are two other car makers, GM, which was 95 percent of the market, and Ford, which has 2 percent, compared to BMW’s 3 percent. In the real car market, most companies have much smaller shares. BMW’s share is not uncommon.
In other words, cars are not computers. And Apple’s 2 percent of the market (it’s not 3) is a problem. Deal with it.
Paul, Paul, Paul. Why on earth are you trolling in the Mac waters? Your idiotic comments have given us all a nice laugh. Now go take a nap, you silly toddler.
Dude, when will you get over the fact that apple makes lots of cool stuff that your lame platform gets years later if at all (and it often doesn’t work except for experts)?
Anyways, the BMW analogy is becoming more and more true. It’s all about standards. Different gas? Macs run on TCP/IP like any other computer on the internet. Macs run Samba. Web browsers work on macs. Java works on macs. KDE apps can be recompiled for a mac. unix GUI apps run on X11 with little modification. Unix command line stuff too. Now exchange server support is coming to Address Book and Mail. There’s new standards for syncing stuff, syncML. There’s vCards for address cards. There’s XML. And on and on.
While your love-mate Bill Gates would like otherwise, the fact is standards are increasingly dominating computers and this is likely to continue. So the analogy, while not perfect, is becoming closer and closer and to a large degree is already true.
Paul: “security, reliability, multi-processor support, etc.–was already in Windows by the time XP shipped.”
Security and reliability? Has your head been in the clouds for the last, oh, few months about how insecure all versions of Windows is?
Reliability? Have you read about XP hell? http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/08/04/xp
Using both XP and OS X each and every day, I can honestly say that OS X is by far the superior OS. I mean, XP doesn’t even pop up the date when I hold the mouse over the clock tray anymore unless I reboot.
Meanwhile, if you’re playing iTunes, then use iChat to have an audio sessions with a friend, OS X turns off the volume on iTunes. It’s such a small thing, but it shows the level of detail put into Apple’s products.
Paul and Wintels have one thing in common, they both suck.
Paul, I own you, you dirty dog:
“Flaw City: Microsoft Windows in security meltdown?”
Paul, why? Why make stupid unfounded comments about stuff you don’t know anything about? You need to pray Apple sticks around for as long as possible. You think Gates is going to innovate anything even slightly cool for you to use? HELL NO. He’s retarted that way. Remember, Gates begged Jobs to make Mac OS the OS of the masses and Steve said, “No, bitch. Thats not the way its going to work” and so Bill had to go and COPY EVERYTHING APPLE HAS EVER OR WILL EVER DO WITH AN OS just to keep up.
Pray for Apple, Paul. You simp.
A user who identifies himself as Paul writes the following:
“Mac OS X is very much the same kind of desktop OS we’ve had since the first Mac, and since Windows 3.0. Windows XP introduced a true task-based UI that makes the computer easier to use. Unlike the Mac OS, all the good underpinning stuff–security, reliability, multi-processor support, etc.–was already in Windows by the time XP shipped. Now which was the real innovation? XP.”
The kindest word I can think of to describe this user is ignorant — woefully ignorant. First, apparently he thinks that Unix — which is the foundation of OS X — is not fundamentally different from the original Mac operating system. The only thing today’s Macintosh has in common with the one of the 1980s and most of the 90s is the name, Mac. That’s it. The cpu architecture and the OS are wholly different — not just partly different or even mostly different. The Macintosh we buy today is a WHOLLY different computer — and it carries the same name only for marketing purposes.
Also, this poor soul is under the impression that OS X does not have protected memory, pre-emptive multitasking, multi-threading, task scheduling, etc. Wrong again. It has all of these things.
Paul also thinks Microsoft was the innovator of Windows XP. Again, this poor soul is mistaken. Windows XP is built upon the NT kernel which was developed at Digital Equipment Corporation under the name, Mica. It had been under development at DEC for four years before a myopic VP cancelled the project. Dave Cutler, its leader, took 16 DEC consulting engineers (the highest tier at the company) and went to Microsoft.
DEC threatened to file a suit for the theft of its intellectual property and the settlement at the time was in part that Microsoft would port NT to DEC’s Alpha chip. But make no mistake — Gates bought NT off the shelf — lock, stock, and barrel. Microsoft originates VERY little of its own software.
As of Windows NT version 4.0, Bill Gates insisted that the video drivers be baked directly into the microkernel — thereby trading stability for performance. Ever since then, one corruption after the next has gone into the kernel until now the Windows OS is very insecure indeed.
To Paul I would say this: If you like viruses, sabotage, privacy violations, big brother, etc., then by all means by software from your beloved Microsoft.
“Children.
BMW doesn’t market a car that runs on a different kind of gas. It doens’t include a stereo that plays a format of disc only BMW supplies. It doesn’t offer differen…SNIP”
What a condecending MORON!
I love reading this kind of drivel from simpleton wintel bozos like yourself.
I guess the biggest form of PAYBACK we can level at you and your ilk is the knowledge that you use what can only be described as the biggest JOKE ever installed on a personal computer.
Go ahead and live in your land of denial. You ain’t going to change any minds around here. We know better. ;o)
Have a nice day, and uh… Why do you jerks have so much free time on your hands if your computer of choice is such a marvel? I would think you would be too busy cumming all over yourself about your latest video game to have time for Mac forums. ???
Jeff Mincey’s is the only post that is accurate and informative. The rest of the posts are BS and bickering.
So say I!
The car analogy would work best if Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler all merged in to one company, AutoSoft.
Looking specifically at Macs and BMW though, the analogy works well on a general level. Yesterday’s luxuries become today’s commodities: power steering, automatic transmission, airbags, ABS brakes, traction control, climate control, nice stereos etc. Also USB, firewire, airport, bluetooth, dgital music players, online music sales, etc.
And as to the specious argument about what kind of fuel cars run on, it should be noted that a minority of cars run on diesel fuel, and their owners seem to get along just fine.
5% market share. 95% mind share.
I like that. Just like the milk ads (1% fat, 99% taste)
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