“Apple is very good at maintaining degrees of freedom. Flexibility, problem solving, and fast responses are the same virtues that one needs in war in order to win. Of course, these aren’t the only virtues. Good communication, intelligence gathering, and efficient logistics are also required,” John Martellaro writes for The Mac Observer.
“Thinking about Apple, I recall of the degrees of freedom they have maintained for themselves as a company so that they can engage in discovery. Steve Jobs sees the computer industry as everyone else does, but thinks thoughts that no one else has thought. It’s not an engineering approach to problem solving. (That’s left to the real engineers on the Apple campus.) Steve does the grand scale problem solving,” Martellaro writes.
Martellaro writes, When an organization as a whole digs in and fights the war against Internet assailants with Windows, there is a certain amount of inflexible thinking. ‘Microsoft supplies all the business software we need, our MSCE certified people are not familiar with Apple products, we can’t afford distractions from the war, and so keep those patches coming so we can make our system incrementally better and better!’
“Worse, Microsoft makes you pay a heavy financial penalty if you even think about changing the game. Your loss of flexibility maintains their cash flow and, conveniently, makes you feel that you’re accomplishing something,” Martellaro writes.
Martellaro writes, “As we know, there is no light at the end of this tunnel. Microsoft never made the big commitment [with Windows Vista], never bit the bullet like Apple did in the transition from Classic/legacy Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. Microsoft, because they had too many constraints, too few degrees of freedom, too many business commitments and concessions, too much technology locked up in the old APIs and kernel design, never made that leap. And so Vista is basically Microsoft’s version of Mac OS 9.3. Pretty snazzy. Cool graphics. Slightly better security. But basically deficient, built on a poor foundation, and not able to confidently face the war against Internet assailants with a new footing and a new technology.”
Martellaro writes, “In summary, Apple’s focus on degrees of freedom, inspired problem solving, and a modern approach to OS security has allowed them to win on multiple fronts. They provide their customers with the technologies they need to win their own wars. Conversely, those who engage in the eternal, incremental, war-patch mentality will find themselves hard-pressed to win any endeavor, any war.”
Much more explanation and detail in the full article here.
[John Martellaro is a senior scientist and author. A former U.S. Air Force officer,he has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple Computer. During his five years at Apple, he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager for science and technology, Federal Account Executive, and High Performance Computing Manager. His interests include alpine skiing, SciFi, astronomy, and Perl. John lives in Denver, Colorado.]
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when did mac news become constantly trash talking the competitor? we get it, microsoft sucks.
Poor fellow cannot seem to hold a job for very long!
This is the thing with Vista, let’s be extremely generous by assuming the best, we say that it’s good to use and far more secure than XP. Fine. Let’s assume that they get their next operating system out the door a bit sooner, say 3-4 years. all well and good. Even with those optimistic assumptions does anyone really have the slightest bit of confidence that Vista is robust and advanced enough to survive long enough for them to eventually make a shift like Apple did to go to OS X? Is the increase in security enough to hold out against the myriad of threats that will be thrown against it? Not a chance. And that’s ignoring the fact that things aren’t even that rosy and that it’s basically XP in a fancy jacket.
Vista has been confirmed that it is only a “interm” upgrade to windows XP. It was never ment to REMAKE the windows OS. The next version of Windows is supposed to be totaly re-written.
of course who knows when and how and if it will be any good, and still light years behind OSX, or maybe OSXI by then, however everyone keeps thinking Vista is going to be a MAJOR release, but its not.
If i can find the link to the explination of Windows releases Ill post it here, but you guys should look for yourselves, i am 100% positive this is true.
It’s a different mind set. I’m on an email list where there are people who believe that their 1992 software should run fine on their new systems. No upgrading, nada. They just expect their old applications to work. That is the problem Microsoft has. They won’t draw a line in the sand and say “OK, from this point on, we will only support Applications written for Vista. Anything non-Vista will work, in emulation, sorta. We can’t guarentee it. Ask your software vender to update their software.”
That is what Apple did. It drew a line, gave users of the old applications a way to use their stuff while waiting for their favorite software to get updated.
Nice summary he gives us:
Windows is ‘basically deficient, built on a poor foundation, and not able to confidently face the war against Internet assailants with a new footing and a new technology’.
Apple ‘provide their customers with the technologies they need to win their own wars’.
“We have to get past this notion that in order for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose…”
– Steve Jobs, MacWorld 1997
“Originally, internal sources pitched Blackcomb as being not just a major revision of Windows, but a complete departure from the way we have typically thought about interacting with a computer. While Windows Vista is intended to be a technologies-based release, with some added UI sparkle (in the form of the Windows Aero set of technologies and guidelines), Vienna is targeted directly at revolutionizing the way we interact with our home and office PCs.”
you can find this information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_"Vienna"
I’ve been saying the same thing ever since it was determined that XP wouldn’t be the clean break with old technologies as was originally intended. Microsoft is heading for a marketshare decline but it will be limited to non-business machines initially.
If, with their next major effort, they try hard to leave users behind (people still running and happy with Windows 98 are NOT going to upgrade to Vista, Microsoft, deal with it) and concentrate on creating something lean and mean, they have a shot at the future, but they WILL piss people off… wait, they already piss people off, so no loss!
@ Dark Side of the Moon
That comment was expedient at that time. Tell me this, if Apple is to increase its marketshare, who is it to win it from if not M$??? Of course MS has to lose for OSX to grow.
Interesting. Microsoft’s approach to software development and technical problems mirrors the US government’s approach to the war in Iraq and the fight against terrorism. Every little success is taken as progress when in fact no progress is being made at all.
“The way for Apple to win is to be very, very good at what it does.” – Steve Jobs, MacWorld, 1997
(or words approximately to that effect). And Apple has shown itself to be very, very good at what it does, OS X being a prime example. I doubt Vista or any succeeding version of Windows will ever be as good as Apple’s productions.
For noticing this, I was not going to bring it up because political flame wars erupting, but . . . we can’t afford distractions from the war, and so keep those patches [new novel justifications] coming so we can [“win the war in Iraq”] make our system incrementally better and better!’
I hope to one day see the Mac OS with 10-20% market share again. Enough to be viable, but not so much as for Apple to become another Microsoft.
I think it helps that Steve has the support of the Mac Faithful, in that when he makes a drastic decision to make a change–OSX or to the Intel Chip–we trust him from past experience to know it’s going to be for the better and we support (and anxiously await) it because we know it will be insanely great and better than what we’ve had before. So we agree to do minor suffering through the Beta of it.
Windows users know all hell will break loose with a big change and it will not be for the better. So they are terrified of change since there is nothing in it for them that is that much better–if not worse even after enduring the beta.
eMax,
I had read those Wikipedia entries before about the history of Winblows, Vista, and Vienna. I personally believe Mafia$oft paid one of their employees to write it. The whole article reads like a Microsucks ad.
“No one ever changes their personal beliefs based on input from a peer”????
I quit reading after that. That’s among the most asinine things I’ve ever read. I have changed my beliefs based on what my friends and wife have said to me, and vice versa. Anyone so pigheaded that they don’t listen to anyone who doesn’t outrank them (and thinks everyone is like that) isn’t worthy of attention.
OMG only now do I get it, the name Windows Vista, as in looking out the window at a vista? Or some such dicky concept??
To The Dark Side of the Moon,
“We have to get past this notion that in order for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose…”
Absolutely. Bingo.
Apple can grow. Microsoft has the option to change and improve. Just because Microsoft “wants” everything, does not mean they must have it. Microsoft provides many services at different levels. Their PC OS needs serious upgrading, but hey, people with Windows 95 can still be serviced by Microsoft. They don’t have to loose those people, they just choose not to support them.
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Rambling done. LOL
N.
That’s probably right. 5 years and they have a slightly better version of XP. Sure, they’ll have a couple of maintenance releases in the coming years. Might even slip in a feature or two, that may or may not work right (until the next maintenance release). In the time it will take them to do that little bit, Apple will have release a couple more major release, experimented with several new technologies, some will be cool, some will be useful, but the market will sort those out. They are unlikely to do anything, however, that would truly resemble a paradigm shift.
The full article is worth reading.
Trench warfare, for those under 100 who aren’t familiar with the term’s implications, refers to the First World War, when millions of soldiers on both sides and led by blockheads with their heads up the asses, fought and died to gain and lose 10 yards of bomb-cratered mud.
Toonie,
It never fails on this site. No matter what the subject, some pencil dick like you has to bring politics into the discussion.
M$ has always had the mind of a predator who is trying to destroy its nearest competitor so it can have unlimited access to prey. In being this way, its energy is not properly invested in making good products to satisfy the needs of its customers. In fine, M$ thinks that it lives on the Serengeti of Africa. M$ has doomed itself with its business model of predation.
“No one ever changes their personal beliefs based on input from a peer”????
I quit reading after that. That’s among the most asinine things I’ve ever read —LordRobin
Perhaps he could have phrased it better. Saying Many people never change… instead of no one. I guess you prove to be one of the exceptions to the rule.
I have never been witness to anyone who ever changed their personal beliefs in response to my influence. I have been witness to many friends whose self-destructive behavior cost them dearly, but whose examples are easy to remember because they had a profound affect on my life as well. But, I have never had anyone come up to me and say ‘you changed my beliefs… or you changed my life,” based on something I said.
Am I wrong in my thinking that the number of people who would change their personal beliefs are in the minority and that these instances might be so rare that I find it perfectly plausible to accept the premise of his line of thinking?
By the way you missed some very good points raised in the rest of article and to borrow a phrase he used to conclude the article… you aren’t even wrong.
Very good article.
But as for this famous quote: “We have to get past this notion that in order for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose…”
– Steve Jobs, MacWorld 1997
I think Steve meant, “…for now!
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He also wanted to add – “Microsoft not only sucks… it squirts!!”