“To change an industry once is impressive. To do it as many times as Apple has – popularizing innovations like the graphical user interface, the mouse, multihued hardware, and edgy industrial design – is phenomenal. For three decades, Apple has blazed a trail for the computer world. Now, the music business is watching slack-jawed,” writes Josh McHugh for Wired.
“Yet somehow, after all its time at the creative helm, Apple clutches a meager 3 percent of the computer market. The company does the inspired work of figuring out new ways to entice people to buy its machines, only to have other vendors crank out inelegant imitations for the masses. It seems unfair, both to Apple and to the hordes saddled with second-rate gear,” McHugh reports.
[MacDailyNews note: market share for last quarter hovered around 3%, but installed base or how many Macs are in consumers’ hands vs. Windows is an open question wtih estimates running from 5-12%]
McHugh continues, “So
Why should Sony buy Apple? Apple is an American company and should remain one of the true innovators on the American plain. If anything, I believe Sun and Apple should consider a merger, but only if the Apple name remains.
Apple and Sun innovate, while companies like DELL and Microsoft duplicate the innovation of others.
How about Apple buying Sony? That’s as likely to happen as the reverse.
Sony buying Apple? Sony is a bigger copy-cat than MS. They are the biggest Apple wanna-bes out there, yet they promote the worst in proprietary techonolgy (ala M$). Need I say MiniDisk or Memory Stick? So Sony makes nice TVs, interesting (but gadgety) Palm devices, and the most attractive (though not well-built) Wintel laptops out there. I just don’t see it.
Who said Apple was for sale? Why screw up the best computer company in the world? McHugh is another idiot journalist. Apple has a very different business model, that Sony and most other companies will never understand. Changes would be made if anyone else owned Apple, and that would in short time kill Apple. Remember Mr. Oatmealeo? As a retired computer tech. that used to work for Apple I submit to Mr. McHugh, that his reasoning sucks.
While I don’t agree on the point that Sony should buy Apple, I don’t think McHugh needs to be slammed by you guys, because he makes valid points.
If Apple’s distribution were anything near like that of PCs it’s have a greater market share. People right now have to actually go out and seek for a place to get a Mac, while everywhere they turn a PC is for sale to them. Convenience sells a lot of boxes.
Also, I like to hear more and more people making light of the act that Apple is the creative powerhouse in computing and the rest just follow their lead. More press like this is good.
I agree w/ thomcarl….
(but i don’t remember the MR OATMEALEO story – please explain).
I also wonder what shall become of Apple should Mr. Jobs untimely ending come. (yes, he should live forever, therefore anytime is untimely). If he can’t complete total Apple World Domination in his lifetime, will the fate of the world be doomed to MS domination? (no, there is another – Obi wan Kenobi)……
Has anyone heard the name Compaq lately? If Sony and Apple merge, I believe it will go the same way. Keeping your existing marketshare is very important, yet, is anyone worried that BMW will go out of business? Mercedes? Saab?
I don’t think so. These companies have tiny market share.
I think Apple should revamp their marketing to revamp their marketshare. Excerpts of the Apple Store in varietable 30-second slots. Show what the OS does.
Sure Sony has alot of cool stuff. Anyone checked out the new Clie yet? But I believe any merger would distort and complex the real mission. Sell out for more market share…absolutely not. I will stick with Apple if they have only .1 marketshare because of the user experience and the fact that they have continuously beat all of the goliaths to the punch with technology innovation and combined intuitiveness since their creation.
A better adopted parent would be IBM. Not even a complete merger, but a stronger alliance. Move OS X to IBM’s Power5 to replace Linux and IBM’s SCO issues. This would give apple a strong enterprise partner and position Apple as the Server OS of the future. IBM’s position in the server space would instantly make OS X server credable in the eyes of fortune 500 companies.
This would benifit IBM by having an easier to maintain server . This would also help Apple as more smaller companies follow suit buying XServes and G5’s to use as servers.
Once OS X gets into the doors in the IT departments, they would be more likley to encourage staff to use Apple for the desktop, since that would make their Job simpler overall.
IBM still has a pretty good marketing channel and a lot of business respect, they might even want to start making OS X desktops. Not as desirable as apple, but better than OS X on intel, opening up the entire world for use as clones, but answering the “single source” objection that many have to using Apple.
A LESSON FROM THE PAST:
There were times when people were saying the things about SONY that they are saying about Apple now: too small, too proprietary, too expensive, the boutique of consumer electronics. 20 years later, nobody thinks they are that small.
Apple should stay on it’s current path, the world is turning, and Micro$oftopoly’s days of dominance will be over. Will Mac ever be the dominant OS? Who knows or cares. But, as long as there is an Apple, there will be enough of us to keep the fires burning.
Think Different
Saab is owned by General Motors.
Saab still has a small market share.
Oldsmobile was owned by GM too, but when the brand became insignificant, it was axed.
Just another ‘sign of the times’ article. Big supposedly means successfull and small a failure. Small and sustainable is the future – either that or the planet wipes us all out!
“People right now have to actually go out and seek for a place to get a Mac, while everywhere they turn a PC is for sale to them. Convenience sells a lot of boxes.”
Isn’t Dell successful because they sell online? Doesn’t everyone buy stuff online? What are these ‘computer stores’ you speak of.
If apple can get OS X running on a REAL Power4 and Power5 not the “Lite” versions and get SMP working right, it would be a boon to IBM.
Jobs had a program called Zilla on NeXTStep which allowed clusters of computers to work as one. Also, the last version of MACH (which Openstep/NeXTStep was running on) allowed SMP. If Jobs can fully utilize SMP and 64bit, who know, we might see OS X running the next generation Supercomputer.
I doubt Panther will fully utilize both processors efficiently, but more as a coprocessor with the Main Processor delegating certain tasks to it.
Arvind
Bahh!
BAD IDEA!
Sony’s corporate attitude towards product development and innovation would be the TRUE death knell for Apple Computer.
Leave them alone and be grateful that Apple has managed to stay creative in a sea of mundane mediocrity!
… and Mercedes owns Chrysler and is an industrial behemoth. Not quite the quaint foreign minnow some seem to think. But back to reality I think very interesting things will develop between Apple and IBM with what we are seeing now but the tip of the iceberg, one hopefully strategically placed in the path of the increasingly titanic Microsoft.
what Adam Smith said. Stay the course Apple, stay the course.
Cinque