“As widely predicted, Steve Jobs this week introduced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference the iPhone… But, you know what was the REAL big news in Jobs’ keynote? Not his apparent poor health, which I have to admit concerns plenty of people, and for good reason. No, the big news was MobileMe, Apple’s Microsoft Killer,” Robert X. Cringely writes for PBS.com.
“Microsoft’s success is based on two products and only two products — Windows and Office. Microsoft is obsessed with the idea that Google will undermine one or both of those monopolies through Google Apps. This is all Steve Ballmer thinks about and is what made him so eager to spend $40+ billion for Yahoo,” Cringely writes. “But what if the real threat isn’t Google at all, but Apple?”
“Nearly everyone who tries it is going to LOVE MobileMe, which Apple — calling it “Microsoft Exchange for the rest of us” — will madly market to small and medium-sized businesses, of which there are six million in the U.S. alone. Those outfits will buy iPhones, MobileMe accounts, and eventually Macs and MacBooks for their workers. IPhone enterprise customers will do the same. Organizations that find Google Apps too hard to use (have you actually tried to build a wiki using Google Sites? I have and it is HARD – far worse than using JotSpot, from which Sites supposedly evolved) or aren’t big enough for Exchange will buy MobileMe instead and never look back” Cringely writes. “And that’s just in the U.S. What about those other 69 countries that will have iPhone service by the end of the year and the 62 that will allow Apple’s App Store?”
“Steve Jobs is brilliant and patient. He has a plan and is executing on it to perfection. Bill Gates couldn’t pick a better time to retire and let someone else take the fall,” Cringely writes.
Much more in the full article here.