“My feeling is that [with Apple’s new Mac mini] there is still something missing, in the same way as the iPod didn’t make total sense until the music store arrived. Every prediction since about some cheesier-looking rival ‘finally’ beating the iPod has quietly been forgotten, before the prediction re-surfaces 6 months later. What this kind of “analyst” fails to realise is that this time, Apple has done it right. The Mac was a much better concept than Windows, and this sort of “analysis” that Windows had “finally caught up” kept appearing, up to Windows 95, when we were assured that the Mac was now history. Of course Apple propped up this prediction by some marketing disasters. Though Windows is in some respects is closer to the Mac and in some areas may be ahead, Mac OS X has opened up a big lead in areas which Microsoft has previously claimed were the future, such as file system search. Windows, before OS X was ready, had a lead in that NT-based versions had proper multitasking and memory protection ahead of the Mac, but who had the technical lead was not a big factor in Apple’s success or failure,” Philip Machanick writes for MacOpinion.
“The big-picture thing which Apple still does better than Microsoft — and which arises out of control of the whole platform — is overall system integration. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in its music offerings,” Machanick writes. “So, getting back to the mini, what options does it open up?”
Full article here.
