MacDailyNews Take: Arrogance: “Apple was poised to license the Macintosh software to several major manufacturers and get the Macintosh standard firmly established in the business market, but Gassée would have none of it. He became more and more adamant in his opposition to the plan. He wouldn’t have any other company cannibalize Apple’s Macintosh sales, even if it meant establishing an industrywide standard. During the winter of 1985, Sculley dropped all plans to license the Mac OS.” – Tom Hormby, LowEndMac, August 25, 2006
Gassée continues, “Fast-forward to the iPhone: It has the polish the early Mac lacked, it has the support of Apple’s own retail network, it has rid itself of the carriers’ mucking around with handsets and content distribution and, thanks to the iTunes infrastructure, it has its App Store, giving it a huge lead in the breadth and depth of available applications. Not everything works flawlessly but it has been an amazingly well organized campaign that has taken the establishment by surprise.”
“The result? A fundamentally different situation: While the Mac struggled from day one, the iPhone immediately took the prize… While Android clones proliferate and race to the bottom, iOS devices are likely to retain a substantial share of consumer dollars. Today, Apple reaps close to half of all smartphone profits,” Gassée writes. “That dominance probably won’t last, but in a sea of Android clones, Apple is likely to remain the most profitable smartphone maker. And this is without considering the other devices the iOS platform will power: tablets, iPods, Apple TV…”
Full article, in which Gassée rightly notes the Mac’s rebirth — “Last year its US market share approached 10%, with a 90% unit share in the $1k-and-greater segment [and] for the past five years, Mac unit sales have grown faster than the PC industry” — here.
Can’t read article on iPhone. CBS News site takes you to their mobile-site home page. Why do so many sites chase away iPhone readers? I’m not so intent on reading their article that I’ll chase it down later.
There isn’t much diffrence between the first iphone and the first mac exept 1 they came at diffrent times and 2 the iphone didn’t have some jackass “working” at apples head quarters stealing code like bill gates did with the mac
the original mac was /very/ polished for the 80’s (heck it was more polished then windows xp)
and the cloning thing was short and didn’t happen till later.
I think electronic distribution of software and a much larger developer industry has a lot to do with the iPhone’s success.
Not to mention Apple was a first mover in this area. Not a first mover in the area of smartphones, but a first mover in the area of getting smartphones done right.
Monsieur Gasse’s blast from the past. All well and good wondering what would have happened if Apple had licensed the Macintosh operating system to third party vendors but in the long run they would have traded market dominance for mediocrity.
You can’t satisfy all of the people all of the time – you end up satisfying the lowest common denominator which would have stifled nimbleness and innovativeness.
Apple stuck to its guns upon the second coming of the founder and the return of Steve Jobs to the fold who promptly terminated third party licenses which undercut Apple’s profitability by selling hardware cheaper than Apple could because they had no R&D costs to recover.
The original Bondi blue iMac set Apple on its path of reuniting software and hardware which resulted in a few missteps along the way like the Cube but in an overall sense laid the foundations for the modern iMac, iPad and iPhone.
Best part of the article was the link to another article:
http://counternotions.com/2010/12/28/the-unbearable-inevitability-of-being-android-1995/
@Macromancer – true.
As a developer, I know that users would much rather have an app or device that does three things really well than fifty things poorly, and as a user, I know I’m right.
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“…the iphone didn’t have some jackass “working” at apples head quarters stealing code like bill gates did with the mac”
No, he just served on the board.
The title of the article is –
iPhone = Mac 2.0
Jean-Louis Gassée: How Apple is Repeating the Mistake that Allowed Windows Clones to Scuttle the Mac
Negative title, many positive comments and an uneasy but semi-positive finish.
Something for everybody but many people will only read the title.
Modern day journalism is almost always about advertising.
maybe the biggest story in telecom over the past decade is Apple’s wresting away control of the handset from the carriers. This is about 8.0 on the Richter scale in terms of telecom impact, and nothing but goodness for us consumers.
Let’s hope the Droids don’t give it back.
Gassée is almost single-handedly responsible for the success of Windows. He is the author of the agreement that signed over Apple’s crown jewels – the Mac multiple window, point-and-click interface – to Microsoft in a way that permitted MS to claim that Apple licensed the whole kit and kaboodle (after they bought, er, found a sympathetic judge).
I don’t really think he’s very qualified to comment on Apple’s mistakes, especially when referring to Apple in the third person.
“But Apple’s arrogance beleaguered the platform”.
How ironic; Gasée accusing Apple of arrogance. It was his own arrogance with respect to the worth of the Be OS that largely persuaded Apple to run with NeXT.
But in a double irony, Gasée thereby did Mac users a favour.
Revisionist history… pretty typical. I really don’t think you can compare 1977-1984 with the development of the iPhone. Very different. It’s not like the world stood still. He might be a smart and well connected fellow, but I don’t see his conclusions.
@ChrissyOne,
No kidding!!! Surely, Mr. Mole had to have signed a non-disclosure agreement in order to serve on Apple’s board.
And the consequences have been…?
@micro me
Totally agree. We’re all definitely better off without Gassee and the BeOS. That would have been a disaster.
Hmm. Interesting. And, by interesting I mean disgusting.
Good ole JL Gasbag pops his vermin-like head thru a hole to spout his ever so convincing jibber to the gullible.
I will follow many years of NewYears resolutions, and continue to wish that he has Sculley in the car with him, when he wraps it around a light standard at 60mph.
Gruber already did the definitive explanation as to why Apple couldn’t license the Mac OS. It also explains why they’ve been firing on all cylinders, every product takes advantage (“halo”) of all the others.
daringfireball.net/2004/08/parlay
“The Art of the Parlay, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Platform Licensing and Market Share”
@i?
Well done if you have just discovered “Counternotions” http://counternotions.com/
Kontra is always a good read, however his posts can be infrequent … months apart at times.
Maybe he was crook* or on a holiday, either way, his views on “Googlistan” can be compelling.
*(Aussie colloquialism for being sick / unwell)
@ Arnold Ziffel
Exactly.
Google pays Apple to be the default search engine on iOS.
A possible scenario where apple wins the outcome of patent suits for multitouch could conceivably require the handset manufacturers to pay a license fee to apple for every android handset sold.
Google still makes the same revenue per handset from search and android datamining. The cost is passed on to the handset manufacturers. If they attempt to pass costs to the consumers they will lose to iOS devices on price.