Analyst: Apple in ‘position to exploit Microsoft missteps, claim leadership’ with Mac OS X Tiger

19 years ago

“Apple has announced that Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger will ship on April 29. I see the release’s timing as important for Apple. Microsoft is months away from issuing a next-generation Windows beta, which will put Tiger well in front of most, early Longhorn hype, although it’s reasonable to expect some buzz coming out of Microsoft’s WinHec conference later this month,’ analyst Joe Wilcox writes for Jupiter’s Microsoft Monitor Weblog.

“Apple also is in a position to exploit Microsoft missteps. Tiger will feature metadata search capabilities as part of the file system. Microsoft touted such capabilities with WinFS, but that file system now won’t ship with Longhorn, if ever. Robust search is a potentially transforming technology that can change the metaphor for working with a computer. The archaic file folder metaphor is long past its prime. Do people think about where to file their memories in their brains? Robust search is much closer than file folders to how most people think. Apple can claim leadership, while Microsoft appears to fall behind,” Wilcox writes.

“Apple is making its search technology, a.k.a. Spotlight, available from its other applications and providing third parties technical information so that they can do the same. Apple’s approach of treating search as a platform is the right one, something Microsoft could have done with WinFS. Microsoft does treat search as a platform on the Web, and I do expect a similar approach on the desktop. But the WinFS retreat gives Apple huge opportunity. Now, instead of getting robust metadata search out ahead of Longhorn, Apple can claim even greater leadership, with uncertainty whether WinFS will ever ship,” Wilcox writes.

“Apple’s first sales opportunity will be its install base, and a boost to high-margin software revenues,” Wilcox writes. “The larger question: Will Windows users–say, those using iPods–start switching rather than wait for Longhorn? My guess is that some of them will move to the Mac. How many I won’t predict. For Microsoft, the loss in mindshare is greater risk than any potential shift in marketshare.”

More in the full article, an interesting read, here.

MacDailyNews Take: It’s always amazed us that Microsoft, with the help of a complicit and parasitic “Wintel” tech media, had convinced the majority of people that Windows is “as good as a Mac.” Now, maybe it’s finally time for that lie to be put to rest.