“Now that the key details about Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, not to mention iCloud, are available, you have to start wondering about Apple’s competitors, and how they’ll react,” Gene Steinberg writes for TechNightOwl.
“By demoting the venerable PC to an equal seat on the table next to smartphones and tablets, Microsoft’s core business is being summarily dispatched by Apple,” Steinberg writes. “The hub of your digital lifestyle has been relegated to the status of just another connected device; your iPhone or iPad can be activated, synced and updated online without the need to connect to a Mac or PC, so the cord is cut.”
“But the unkindest cut of all was Apple’s decision to sell what is clearly a major system upgrade for $29.99, a mere 99 cents higher than Snow Leopard, which was never advertised as a major feature release. I expect the number of changes in Snow Leopard were probably roughly compatible to the real changes between Windows Vista and Windows 7. Only Microsoft charged you full price for the retail upgrade, and I expect they will justify a similar price structure for a Windows 8 upgrade box for the very same reason,” Steinberg writes. “I also don’t expect that Microsoft has a clue how to make it a credible online-only release. Apple has perfected that technique with the Mac App Store, which now includes the Lion developer releases.”
Steinberg writes, “Sure, Microsoft could try to imitate Apple in the same fashion as they pay lip service to mobile OS integration in the next version of Windows. Windows 8 might be available in some new online app repository, but don’t expect Microsoft to seriously consider a retail price of under $30.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bloodbath.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
I love that word, MDN: Bloodbath
“Bloodbath” is no longer strong enough. This is of a
“Biblical” scale. We need a new word.
Armageddon?
Sofmageddon or Microgeddon?
The Code of Hammurabi applies.
All start with B, so the MDN tradition continues. Blood Bath, Beleaguered, Biblical Blood Bath, How about “BlackBerryed” meaning the same demise that came to BlackBerry is happening to……..
“Bockscarred”
Don’t you mean “BlackBuried”? 😀
Even better.
booyah’d
You guys all suck. I am disappointed in you. The B word is obviously BALLMERED!!!!!
Punchline! ROFL!
Check out this video on YouTube:
Better than words
Sent from my iPad
Ummm… WTF?!?
Butchered Bastards!
Keeping in line with the double “B” sounding of bloodbath!
Bloodflood!
Still, 30 dollars doesn’t make their system any cheaper or more cost effective. A friend was excited to have PAID OFF a Mac they bought. Are you kidding? I pay for my systems in full because I can. If I have to take a loan out for a computer then that’s a sad state of affairs.
Anyhow I don’t think they have anything to fear, seriously. The niche Apple market will always be there but the price of their systems is not worth it. I work on and around Macs daily and believe me – they are NOT infallible.
I look forward to Windows 8 with all of the integrations it will have across multiple devices (phones, tablets, laptops and now XBox). 🙂
Each and every release of OSX and iOS, better defines and moves away from competitors offerings. Google has been able to keep up, but Micro$haft keeps falling farther and farther behind.
The Oracle litigation with Google will be very very interesting. If they force Google to charge for android, that will put tremendous cost pressure on the collection of companies trying to compete with iOS based devices. And, it will open the door to Microsoft, and that will only damage Google.
People already have misgivings about spending money on software, and have always resented paying hundreds of dollars for an OS. Apple just confirmed every Joe Consumer’s suspicions. That an OS is only worth 30 bucks. That’s going to be hard for Microsoft to overcome.
Also makes Macs/iOS devices an easier sell to businesses. Microsoft ensures that rolling out a new OS takes years and thousands of dollars per desktop. Apple shows us it’s only $30 and a few clicks. So are you going to spend your budget on an OS upgrade, or buying a whole department MacBook Airs and iPhones?
In enterprise it won’t happen overnight. In the Consumer market, we’re well on our way already.
If Apple now charging $30 for an OS means that an OS is worth $30, then that means that when in the past they charged $130 for an OS, an OS was likewise worth $130.
X2
If Microsoft doesn’t add the ability to save their files as iWork files, they will be cut out of the iPad and iPhone user’s lifestyle! I don’t know how they will be able to automatically up date the iOS devices at this point.
Is this the end of Microsoft Office for the Mac? As the Mac market share grows through the 1 out of 3 or 4 personal computers, will Microsoft Office even be a player? What if Apple starts selling iWork for PCs like they did the iTunes and Sufari for Windows, it just works for PCs. That will be new and auto updating with the iOS devices!
Anyone think monkeyboy is dancing yet!
Sorry,
iWork needs a lot of work to supplant MS Office. There’s lot’s of missing functionality that needs to be closed. Seems like it could be closed, but Apple is stopping far far short of where this product needs to be to support anyone in the enterprise. And after all, in the post PC era, people aren’t going to have 2 devices to carry around for Enterprise and personal. That trend is unmistakable, personal and business activities are colliding and people want it all on one device.
Just because a piece of software can do something does not mean it must do something. MS Office is bloated with non-core user functionality that can be stripped away and 99% of users will never know it left. Having worked with the evolution of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access, I’m sure the knee of the improvement curve was reached at about version 2.0 for each of them. The rest is just clutter.
I totally agree. Anything they have added after Word 5.1 (Mac version) has basically been clutter and eye candy (more like eye sore.) For many practical purposes Excel was more or less feature complete at version 3 and it was introduced on Windows as 3.1.
The need for Macro’s, subtotaling, pivot tables, etc are used by business every day. They are key pieces of making spreadsheets productive to use.
All of the major ERP systems interface with excel to dump data for analysis and take data in to allow for an automated interface. Because I don’t use Mac in business, I don’t know how the integration with these ERP systems interface with iWork, but I suspect they do not.
I don’t know how you put up with the frustrations of Windows. I try to avoid Windows like the plague. It’s like a 40% efficiency penalty whenever I have to use that piece of shit.
Numbers is a fairly elegant substitute for Excel and I’ve not found anything I would have done on Excel that I couldn’t do on Numbers. Excel to me is a study in frustration. I tear my hair out every time I’m confronted with Ribbons.
You can create macros in numbers. I strongly suggest you try iWork before critcisingnit.
i suppose it will depend on the nature of the work you do but in a normal manufacturing and sales environment like ours (B to B and B to C) we simply do not need the things you list. Nor the complexity, nor the expense. Our systems software is agnostic. We don’t want locking in to anything (even iPads).
When we audited the actual use of our desktops and portables and software (NOT the claimed use), we found that most didn’t actually need a desktop or portable at all. They now have iPads. Those that did, mostly have iMacs or MBPs loaded with perfectly adequate Pages and Numbers and the far superior Keynote. The few that truly needed more have kept Office (and, to be fair, some requested they kept their Wintel PCs – it takes all sorts!). We will replace Office with Open Office next year.
Clear thinking, sensible analysis, consultation with staff and we are saving nearly $1m per annum. And we have happier more productive staff.
Same thing here, pivot tables and macros are necessary. We are not a large company by any stretch but we’ve probably got over 1000 employees who rely on those features and perhaps another 2 or 3 thousand that are using spreadsheets with macros built by someone else. I’ve got Numbers on an IPad but haven’t used it enough to comment on its abilties.
I totally agree too. Is not the point to allow beautiful cusom documents to be created. Pages does that with finesse.
Just because you can drag a visio diagram into the middle of a word document and sort-of edit it inline, does not mean this is good thing.
Ok, Pages may need to improve on a few things like florets or page numbering or something, but once you get out of the but-in-Word headspace, Pages is a brilliant program.
And anyone who has tried both knows that PowerPoint never ever held a candle to keynote.
In short iWork is a great set of apps.
I’m not sure what the missing features are in iWork that you need to make it a complete suite.
When I switched from Windows to OS X I decided to go the whole hog and leave everything Microsoft behind including Outlook and the whole Office suite. One of the principal reasons behind it was the fact that I felt Microsoft bit a hunk out of my butt every time I wanted to upgrade. Plus Apple priced iWork at a $30 discount if I bundled it with my MBP.
Again I don’t have to go through the hassle of entering my licence key time & again which is another hassle I can do without. I installed a licensed copy of Windows 7 on my Boot Camp partition 3 months ago. Everything worked fine until yesterday when I got a message that my copy of Windows was ‘not genuine’ and had to be re-authenticated again. In the meantime my entire screen went blank and I wasted a good 45 minutes scrabbling around looking for a solution on Microsoft’s website not knowing what to do.
I can tell you that I FUCKED MICROSOFT a thousand times then and still do now.
Unfortunately, as it is now Numbers is not a feasible replacement for Excel. For the majority of users it should suffice, but if you need advanced features like pivot tables, macros, etc Numbers just does not offer them.
Of course not. Just as an iPad is not a replacement for a desktop.
Trucks, cars. It isn’t complicated.
Call me crazy, but for some strange reason I get the feeling that Apple has not ceased improving iWork.
Yep, this is how you disrupt your competition. You price your competitive offering in their cashcow business at a price far, far lower. Then customers ask, why are we paying so much for Windows, when we can pay so much less for OS X Lion, which does so much more? Then, Microsoft is forced to lower their retail pricing for Windows, hurting their cashcow profits. This ultimately weakens their ability to subsidize their other lines of business like Mobile, etc.
While Apple, $306B, is now not worth as much as Wintel, $318B, it’s within spitting distance of Microsoft+HP+Dell, at $307.8B. Those guys just got demoted.
“bloodbath”?
or is it “Enola Gay”?
iCloud: “…destroyer of worlds.” Maybe the symbol for iCloud should be a mushroom cloud.
By God, that’s brilliant. I’ll have to see about making or getting a custom Mushroom Cloud icon for my system.
Apple is a lot like the Enola Gay – a vector of human suffering and environmental devastation.
Awhile back someone said the iPad was “The one ring to rule them all”. You was WRONG, jackhat, THIS is THE ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL.
checkmate.
More like “never have to check again, mate” since everything is in sync and up to date, don’t you think?
“One iCloud to rule them all, One icloud to find them,
One iCloud to bring them all and in the sunshine find them.”
Nice.
I love everyone’s enthusiasm but I have the feeling that only in the USA will all of the iCloud features work properly.
Microsoft and Apple work in the global marketplace.
I think initially, you are probably right, but I can definitely see Apple expanding it’s scope over time (and building datacenters elsewhere to help with latency).
I do think that the iTunes Match portion will be difficult to do worldwide due to the licensing requirements. It probably won’t make fiscal sense to pursue rolling that out worldwide.
Check out this video on YouTube:
Sent from my iPad
Forget about iCloud scaring Microsoft. iCloud scares ME! This is NOT A $30 UPGRADE, PEOPLE!!! The total cost of replacing Rosetta dependent apps will run into thousands of dollars not counting the cost of the time it will take me to research new software and devise work arounds for software that has no modern equivalent. More money will be needed for a new iPhone because my 3 GS won’t run iOS 5. The iDisk that I use to run my business: GONE. MobileMe email and calendar syncing: GONE. Hey Apple? How about a kiss? Why I want kiss? Because I like to get kiss from someone trying to intercourse me!
iOS 5 will run on the 3GS.
MobileMe email and calendar syncing is supposed to be seamlessly transitioned to iCloud syncing.
Yeah, iDisk will be gone, though accessible to current subscribers until next year.
Replacing Rosetta dependent apps? Well, that’s truly a problem. Though you could create a dual-boot setup, or simply not upgrade your computer to Lion. Either of those would solve the problem.
No matter how seamless the transition is to iCloud you will not be able to use it with Snow Leopard. When this finally sinks in with more people they’re not gonna be happy.
so much as I sympathize with your position, I think this is the price one pays when holding out on upgrading. I realize this cost $$, but you either pay now or pay later.
Ever hear of Adobe or Quark? Just two examples of sofware that slows systems upgrades. Or if you prefer, use the: If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it, approach
Either way there are valid reasons companies and people simply CANNOT jump on the latest release.
If I ever start complaining about Apple’s upgrade cycles, I know that I’ll be either too old or too poor to stick around. I’ll get a comfortable chair for my porch and spend my remaining days yelling at kids to get off my lawn.
Instead of buying silly things like Skype, Microsoft should buy Dropbox and build in that functionality so that it can save MS format documents across all platforms.
Microsoft has long had a “monkey see, monkey do” attitude regarding anything Apple does. When Apple introduced the Mac App Store, I knew Microsoft would try to come out with some kind of Windows App Store, and sure enough, one’s on the way, isn’t it?
Well, this time the monkeys have gotta be stumped. iCloud is not something Microsoft can just run out and copy (despite their “To The Cloud!” advertising campaign).
——RM
And we await the coming of Gozer – the Destructor.
Haven’t had a chance to read all the responses yet.
But all I have to say about this….. VICTORY for steve jobs
I’m on my way to the apple store to pick up my moms new mini!!!!
2 years of trying to get her to switch… And lions new features got her wanting to switch.
Thank you apple!
One less headache in my life!
Again, this only proves that Apple writes software to sell hardware. Totally deferent business model form Microsoft, who only is a software company. Every single code line that Apple has written has had the motivation to sell hardware, and it is working beautifully for them.
The bloodbath stuff is getting really boring.