“The 20-year death grip that Microsoft has held on the core of computing is finally weakening—pried loose with just two fingers. With one finger you press ‘Control’ and with the other you press ‘right arrow.’ Instantly you switch from a Macintosh operating system (OS) to a Microsoft Windows OS. Then, with another two-finger press, you switch back again. So as you edit family pictures, you might use Mac’s iPhoto. And when you want to access your corporate e-mail, you can switch back instantly to Microsoft Exchange,” Gary Morgenthaler reports for BusinessWeek.
“This easy toggling on an Apple computer, enabled by a feature called Spaces, was but an interesting side note to last fall’s upgrade of the Mac OS,” Morgenthaler reports.
MacDailyNews Note: We’ll, the toggling, yeah, but you really need to be running Windows via inexpensive virtualization software from Parallels or VMWare in one of those Spaces to do as Morgenthaler describes.
Morgenthaler continues, “But coupled with other recent developments, the stars are aligning in a very intriguing pattern. Apple’s (AAPL) recent release of a tool kit for programmers to write applications for the iPhone will be followed by the June launch of iPhone 2.0, a software upgrade geared toward business users.
Morgenthaler reports, “Taken together, these seemingly unrelated moves are taking the outline of a full-fledged strategy. Windows users, in the very near future, will be free to switch to Apple computers and mobile devices, drawn by a widening array of Mac software, without suffering the pain of giving up critical Windows-based applications right away. The easy virtualization of two radically different operating systems on a single desktop paves a classic migration path. Business users will be tempted. Apple is positioning itself to challenge Microsoft for overall computing dominance—even in the corporate realm.”
MacDailyNews Take: As we have been saying for years. It’s nice to finally see it in the pages of a mainstream publication such as BusinessWeek.
Morgenthaler continues, “It all started with Mac OS X, the multi-core, multi-processor platform officially released in 2001… The modular new OS allowed Apple to condense its core task management function into a tiny computing kernel [which] has proved easily adaptable across the entire Apple product line, from highly complex servers all the way down to the relatively simple iPod Touch. Such modularity allows Apple to add whatever functions are necessary for each product environment—all while maintaining cross-product compatibility.”
Morgenthaler reports, “By contrast, Microsoft has held on to an OS tethered to the 1980s, piling additions upon additions with each upgrade to Windows. With last year’s arrival of Vista, Windows has swollen to 1 billion bytes (a gigabyte) or more of software code. The ‘Mach’ kernel of the Mac OS X, however, requires less than 1 million bytes (a megabyte) of data in its smallest configuration, expanding modestly with the sophistication of the application. This bloating has saddled Vista users with increased costs and poor performance…”
Morgenthaler reports, “As corporations become increasingly mobile, the pressure will build to make them Apple-centric from top to bottom. Rising sales of Apple laptops and iPhones will make the Mac OS only that much more mainstream and acceptable to corporate IT departments. By 2010, the number of iPhones in use could approach 100 million. It’s possible that the iPhone’s share of the U.S. smartphone market (28% in the fourth quarter) will soon approach the 70% share iPod now holds in the MP3 market.”
Much more Apple and Mac goodness in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Norm” for the heads up.]
Vavoom!
way to go apple
Just guessing- but another chair flies in Ballmer’s office?
MW: hit
The WOW has started
Isn’t it AT&T;’s edge? Just kiddin’.
What you say may be true for professionals and power users, but I haven’t seen much of such emerging awareness among people who equate the blue “E” icon with “the Internet”.
It does looks like the I’m a Mac/I’m a PC ads are doing something, but not to the big masses hinted at above.
It is only when the IT-whiz nephews who “fix” those peoples’ computers will loosen their grip and won’t feel the need to discourage switching (“out of fear for the unknown and for the lack of (unneeded) IT support in the future”), that the herds will start to switch.
Can’t wait to read the Windoze FanBoys emails again on this one … Will they ever understand? Probably beyong them, as per usual …
watch the replies … the “beyong” was done on purpose …
Umm…OK…so the “beyong” was done on purpose.
And….
On a serious note; glad to see that the news is spreading with the help of some of the more respected magazines.
@guessing-
Ya got that right! Monkey Boy’s aim is getting worse, thankfully.
Apple is way past “the tipping point”. People who had no clue what was happening at the time will look back and pontificate on the “inevitability” of the Mac emergence.
But what is amazing me is the synergy being created by the Mac/iPod/iPhone triumvirate. Molly Wood of Buzz Out loud scoffed at the hype created by the iPhone SDK. But she just doesn’t get it. 1) The iPhone has created a brand new platform. In 5-10 years many people will be using a portable phone/computer as their only computer. 2) The iPhone will break down the huge barrier between Apple and Business. 3) The App store will revolutionize the way software is purchased. The ubiquitous, frictionless and intuitive distribution method will simultaneously lead to a massive surge in profits for developers and a ten fold increase in the number of software applications that consumers will be will to purchase. 4) The development of iPhone software will lead to an explosion of Mac software.
We ain’t seen nothing yet. The expansion of Apple is just beginning.
@Falkirk,
I completely agree. Apple has been able to convince my Windows-only father-in-law to consider getting a Mac this go-round, after spending the last 20 years telling us about the supposed advantages of MS and Windows and how Macs are what “Liberals use,” as if comedian Rush Limbaugh (apologies to Keith Olbermann) and Walker Bush are to the left of Generalisimo Francisco Franco.
Apple has been working their grand plan since Steve returned, and now it has everything in place to go after MS full bore.
I want to believe…
@Falkirk
“) The App store will revolutionize the way software is purchased. The ubiquitous, frictionless and intuitive distribution method will simultaneously lead to a massive surge in profits for developers and a ten fold increase in the number of software applications that consumers will be will to purchase.”
I hope to see this expand to all mac software!, would be great to see software organized by type, now you have to google, do not really know about it, with iTunes it would be vetted, could compare similar offerings, read comments, and purchase using your iTunes account, (hate giving my CC info all over)
What!?
microsoft builds bloatware???
nevAr!!1
If the Apple haters are so blinded that they have not figured out yet that Apple is a force in the tech world (iMac/Macs, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, etc…), they never will. Let them keep their loser heads in the sand or up their butts, either way, Apple is here to stay and there are no amount of words or lies that will change that.
vanfruniken…
As one of those “IT nephews” you speak, I’m of the Macintosh variety.
I used to irritate everyone in the family with Mac this, Mac that. At one point My sister forbade me to mention Macs in her house! She was a Windows developer. ;^)
So, I STFU. BUT, armed with my Nikon CoolPix and PowerBook, became the unofficially official family photographer. I just did my Mac thing and when asked would Mac-out. I take photos, do a little Photoshop, have slide shows by plugging the PB into a TV.
Pretty soon people started switching. The first was my uncle, who had an IBM PC, but was afraid to use it and had a “real IT guy” keep it running for him. He finally asked me to make a list of what to buy and bought a Titanium PowerBook. He was extremely happy with it and was thrilled every time he was able to do new things with it… CoolPix, Airport network, even an iPod.
It’s been like Viet Nam domino effect. One by one they switched… Aunt, cousins, brother (a WIndows software developer). My sister is the last. Waiting for that loathsome Dell to die. She’s even got a list of what Mac gear to buy.
I see apple in 3-5 years having the perfect multi-platform ecosystem with a computer at home, a laptop and an iphone with syncing of everything. Add apple tv and music at home and I’ll have the perfect set-up! Apple should buy sonos and integrate it with iTunes though.
I have a friend is an IT director. Just 5-6 years ago, he was trash talking Mac. Now he refers to it as a viable platform that nobody should talk bad about. Amazing. Nothing has really changed other than perception. Eventually, IT guys must admit it and make the change or sell extra fries with their Dells.
I was a person who said Mac this and Mac that….BUT I backed it up with showing its capabilities vs just empty rhetoric.
Today, I know a number of hard-core PC users both Power and average users have a Mac or are in the process of getting one.
They do sell themselves however, it works better when important magazines point out that the old paradigm, Mac vs PC is dead. It is not Mac+windows+Linux in a cool machine vs PC for roughly the same price.
Ya gotta be the kind of person who leaves pubic hairs on computer laptops not to understand the obvious advantages.
First edit of the BusinessWeek article:
“<strike>Steve Ballmer</strike> This bloating has saddled Vista users with increased costs and poor performance…”
A couple of things …
a) vanf…, what are you muttering about? One of my wife’s fellow playwrights switched a couple years back and another is talking about switching right now. Nearly ALL the progress has been among the folks who don’t want to know how to be sure their anti-malware is doing its job.
b) “It all started with Mac OS X, the multi-core, multi-processor platform” and “By contrast, Microsoft has held on to an OS tethered to the 1980s” … OSX does NOT require multi-processors, or even multi-cores, though it deals with them each just fine. And, FWIW, Unix (the basis for OSX) is rooted in … the 70s? OK, maybe the 80’s. WinNT was based on the work of the gent who designed VMS at DEC, an OS dating back to the early 80s and “mini-computers”.
Yeah … I’m older than dirt. What’s your point? Senility will get us all, in the end. Some of us much ‘earlier’ than others.
@Mr. Reeee
Funny that you mention this, in the pre-MacOSX days I also ran around “helping” people upgrade or “better install” their systems, adding a utility here and there, such as file translation software, etc, which Apple seemed to provide on and off…. In retrospect, I may have created undue and unhealthy dependencies. More often than not, Mac users can maintain their systems themselves, while the Windows world relies on “IT nephews” for home Winboxes and hordes of self-serving IT staff for business Winboxes.
However, even if such help may have been needed in the past, I feel that MacOSX comes with all the bells and whistles that the average user ever needs, plus, finally well maintained pointers at Apple’s Software Download site.
Holy crap! I’m not dreaming. Now, we just need to get other mainstream publications to publish the truth, too.