I forgot to mention–Step 1 in that corporate meltdown has already been illustrated, in a way, by Apple’s experiment with clones back in the 90s.
This one: “Microsoft outcompetes Apple by virtue of their greater size and influence, and the fact that they can afford to sell their OS cheaper for longer than Apple can.”
There’s clearly a significant market of people who prefer MacOS. If they could be swayed by price, they’d already be buying $400 PCs with Windows preloaded. But they aren’t - they’re willing to pay hundreds of dollars more in order to use MacOS and other Apple software. I believe they’d be willing to pay the same premium if it moved from the price of the hardware to the price of the software; they aren’t going to switch to Windows just because it’s cheaper.
You may well be right. But there are, of course other factors in play. Hardware sales underwrite the costs of software production. Can Apple really make up the difference by charging more for software? How much more will consumers tolerate? Will Microsoft be able to force Apple out of the market simply by using their clout at the corporate level? Certainly, this would be a major reorganzation of Apple’s buisness paradigm. Can the company sustain that kind of trauma without going under? Without losing investor confidence? Will they be willing to go through that kind of shakeup after a major OS transition AND a major architecture transition?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, and I am not an economist. I just don’t see it going well from Apple’s standpoint. Using their previous experience with the clones as a case study, I don’t forsee an alternate ending. Granted, your critique might be: they didn’t go far enough. Well, maybe. I’m just not optimistic.
They wouldn’t have to pay any more than they already do now, right? They’d just be buying, say, a $1000 Dell and a $500 MacOS CD instead of a $1500 Apple with the OS preloaded.
I still don’t see how you think this would happen. How would Microsoft’s corporate clout prevent Apple from selling MacOS to the legions of fanatics who love it? Are they going to spend a billion dollars improving Windows to the point where it’s undeniably better than MacOS, or just do enough marketing to dupe Mac users into switching?
I don’t have those answers either. One might argue, though, that Apple has really been a software company for years now, and such a reorganization is long overdue.
I’d say the clone problem was caused by unrealistic expectations. Apple wanted clone makers to bring MacOS into markets Apple wasn’t interested in serving, while leaving the average-user Mac market exactly as it was. Instead, the clone makers undercut Apple on their own turf. Apple’s response was to eliminate the competitors instead of making their own products more competitive, and they’ve never given up that strategy since.
I suppose. I have this nagging feeling that people will be more resistant to increases in software price than they will in hardware price, but that’s all it is–a feeling. Objection withdrawn.
Ha! I think the past would indicate they are certainly unwilling to do the former. And the latter seems unlikely too. No, I think what I am trying to get at is that Apple has always had a hard time making inroads into the buisness market, and that has hurt them in other markets (just as their dominance in the education market for a long time improved their status in other markets). I do not see this improving. If Microsoft percieves OSX-on-Intel to be a threat to their marketshare dominance, they will almost certainly exert a degree of pressure on corporate bodies in the form of financial incentives (or other incentives I am not creative or evil enough to concieve of) that Apple simply cannot match. Perhaps all my argument boils down to is: Apple cannot take Microsoft head-on. Microsoft is just too large and well-entrenched at the moment. Historically, Apple has survived by carving out a niche and gradually expanding it as they see fit–almost always into places where Microsoft has little to no dominance. But to drop everything and move into the realm of the operating system? That will bring the hammer down extremely quickly.
In some ways, yeah. But it hasn’t been by choice. And does it not now have a great opportunity to make a stand as a hardware company? Apple’s hand has always been forced by poor hardware supply. The PowerPC has consistently been falling short of expectations. The switch to Intel means they can compete on hardware with very little effort on their part. Whether this makes them viable once more or irrelevant is up to the observer, I suppose.
Definitely. It has been one of their greatest flaws. But are the markets they wanted to break into then any more vulnerable now? I submit that they are not.
They wouldn’t have to change that or take Microsoft head-on. They could target the very same customers they have now, but focus on selling their software, which seems to be what everyone is excited about anyway. Imagine if they sent every registered Mac user a postcard saying, “We regret to inform you that our upcoming $1500 Intel Mac has been cancelled because Apple is getting out of the desktop hardware business. However, we’ve reviewed the currently available Intel PC systems and found that the $1000 Dell Dimension XYZ meets or exceeds all the specifications of the cancelled system, and it’ll run OS X flawlessly. If you preorder MacOSx86 for $500 today, we’ll send you a coupon for $100 off the purchase of a qualifying Dell system.”
Maybe if they can actually produce better hardware, but I find it unlikely that Apple is going to make a better or cheaper Intel system than dozens of other companies who’ve been doing it for years. Does anyone really expect Apple’s Intel hardware to be competitive in any sense other than being able to run OS X?
I find it hard to believe that Microsoft would take this move lying down. Apple is going to switch to the same architecture that Microsoft uses, produce a piece of software that does the same basic thing that Microsoft’s does, and they’re not going to care? I don’t think it matters much if we say the target market is current Mac users… Apple has ALWAYS tried to snatch users from Windows–you think that’ll stop? You think Microsoft will continue to pay no attention? Microsoft already sees Linux as a threat because it installs on x86 and it’s becoming popular as buisnesses realize it’s generally cheaper and more secure than Windows (Cite. Cite.) I really don’t see how a collision is avoidable here.
Well… it’ll be cool. And pretty. But certainly not cheap. I see them where Sony is positioning itself now with its VAIO stuff. High-end, reliable, with good industrial design and aesthetics. Apple will never be Dell, but honestly, that’s for the best.
I agree, Microsoft would get upset. But what could they really do? The people who love MacOS aren’t going to switch to Windows, and if Apple keeps selling them software at the same profit margin they’re currently making on hardware, Apple will stay in business, right?
Sure, MS could offer deals to businesses to get them to stick with Windows, like they’re doing to challenge Linux, but that’s hardly Apple’s market anyway, and remember that even Linux is still growing despite MS’s best efforts.
The problem is that a large part of the “Mac experience” is the tight integration between the hardware and software. Selling MacOS X Intel as a software-only product that can be installed on any PC configuration is guaranteed to break that integration for a large portion of the audience, and just drive them to alternatives instead.
Why not just publish strict system requirements and promote a few specific PC models that meet them? Let anyone who wants to run it on an unsupported PC find their own drivers and use OS X at their own risk. I’m not asking Apple to support a wide range of hardware, only to stop going out of their way to break compatibility with hardware that’s supported but not “blessed”.
Ok, I’ll poke my head back in for a little bit 
I don’t think you can underestimate the value of the iPod and it’s marketshare in the MP3 players to Apple, nor can you underestimate how that’s extending to their iTunes software.
Apple has (and brillitantly I might add) diversified their portfolio quite well (much as Microsoft has done with gaming and the X-box).
You could also argue that this diversification and the immense profit they’re reaping from it could be what allows Apple to make this move.
Instead of relying solely on their sales of computers w/ bloated hardware prices and an OS that only a minority views as superior, Apple can take more chances now knowing that they have a new golden goose. And, as Mr. 2001 said they could expand to selling the OS and get out of the hardware business, or at the least scale it back.
Just tossing that out there, you can’t discount how well Apple is doing due to iTunes and the iPod.
Now imagine theres an unfixable flaw in the old gas nozzle with which, you can stick a paperclip in the nozzle and you get free gas. Almost everyone is aware of this flaw and most people, if pressed, could figure out how to exploit it. It seems to me that Shell might have a very good reason to avoid that whole morass and jus stick with their style gas nozzle which is largely immune to that kind of thing.
Ah, but you see, the flaw is actually in the gas filler neck itself, not Shell’s dispenser. Anyone can easily find directions to modify their old car’s hackable filler neck to accept Shell’s nozzle and get all the free gas they want.
Now this is getting confusing… and kinky.
If I understand your meaning, you’re saying that if Apple lets OS X boot on regular PCs, pirates will copy their operating system. But a bit of code to verify that the OS is booting on a “blessed” system isn’t going to stop pirates any more than the copy protection on games or audio CDs does. The developer preview has already been modified to boot on a regular PC, and I’m willing to bet that the final version will be too, unless Apple makes their Intel systems significantly different from regular PCs - so different that a lockout would be pointless, just like a PS2 game doesn’t need to verify that it isn’t running on an Xbox, because they’re fundamentally incompatible.
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- I have nothing useful to add.
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- Except a story: a guy at work was more-interested but less computer-inclined than myself; he was one of the people bugging me for news on how well this all worked. I said what is generally said–that you need to shop from a list of specific core components and that many peripherals still have problems as well, even if they work in the regular OSX. --And then he said “you know what would have been funnier than shit, was if you could have gotten this thing going on the very first day it got out, and then when you found out your iPod or whatever didn’t work with it, cart the PC down to the local Apple store and ask them to figure out what’s wrong with it”…
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I think that the main problem Apple faces is that a majority of computer users don’t think that MacOS is inferior, they just think it’s too expensive. I believe that the platform change will lead Apple between the proverbial rock and hard place, with rampant piracy on one side and Microsoft on the other.
In my experience, relatively few users actually prefer Windows; they either haven’t used both OSes, or they don’t think it’s worth the price difference to buy a Mac.
Consider the two main strategies Apple has:
[ol]
[li]Switch to being a software company for vanilla x86 boxes (direct competition with Microsoft)[/li][li]Try to lock OS X out from running on any but Apple Trusted Systems (probable failure -> drastically increases piracy)[/li][/ol]
I do not believe that Apple can win a direct challenge against Microsoft. First, it’s impossible for Apple to effectively price discriminate with their OS as well as they can with their hardware. Since a Mac Mini sells for $500, that puts an upper bound on their OS price at $500. More realistically, given consumers’ dislike of paying more than about $100 for a piece of software, they might be able to sell it for $200-300. That’s got to be significantly less profit than they’re earning on their high end systems today. I don’t believe that Apple will be able to grow their marketshare fast enough to make up the difference, especially considering that Microsoft can afford to drastically undercut them on price and has an incredibly large user base to work with.
Now, if Apple decides to only let MacOS run on special Apple hardware, that might work for a few months. But it’ll get cracked. We all know it will. And once it’s cracked, all of a sudden all the people who don’t think it’s worth the price (or haven’t tried it), will have the chance to download a cracked copy off of their favorite P2P system. And if Apple triest to sell to them it would bring them into direct competition with Microsoft.
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- Just to interject a bit of perspective here–the primary protection (the TPM chip business)of the Apple image currently running loose was cracked in less than two days after it was released. Literally, in less than 48 hours. In the PC-game industry, the AVERAGE time it takes hackers to defeat new CD/DVD anticopy-protection is considered to be three days. Apple is not going to get “a few months” to sell copies unmolested–it’s going to get cracked almost immediately.
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That’s my whole point about Apple being “doomed”. It’s not gonna take “a few months” to do this when the release is final, when the retail version becomes available it’s going to be fully-cracked and on the bittorrents within a few days. Right now installing the image to a PC is a hassle to do because you need to have a separate Linux PC (or a live distro CD) and an extra hard-drive for some parts of the process, but even that will likely get easier. Whenever Microsoft releases a new Service Pack, crackers are generating and sharing OS install CD’s with the new service packs slipstreamed before Microsoft is distributing them. I would not be surprised at all to see hackers generating Windows-burnable DVD images that let you select the motherboard setup options you need and will then flip and patch a corrected image to the HD of the PC you want it installed on.
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You’re absolutely right–Apple can only keep the hackers at bay for so long. But I think it would be foolish to presume that they are not aware of that fact. And Steve Jobs is a good enough buisnessman to know whether or not the company should really be worried about this kind of piracy in the first place. I say we wait and watch before throwing around words like “doomed” or “beleaguered.” Apple could almost certainly survive indefinitely in their current incarnation, so its interesting to me from a buisness standpoint that they’ve chosen to make their move now. One wonders what the impetus was…
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- Here’s a funny thought: while perusing a news release on the legit/developer Mac-Intel PC’s, one article noted that MacIntels could also run Windows, but the whole point of the TPM chip was to prevent regular generic PC’s from running the OSx86 software. What do you think the effect would be if Microsoft introduced a protection in their OS, to ensure that it would not install or run on Mac-enabled hardware? If Mac OS requires that the TPM chip be there, then all it would require for MS to block installation on the same hardware is a check to ensure that the TPM chip isn’t present. Microsoft already prefers that PC makers preinstall OS copies, because it’s easier to catch retailers for pirating than it is individuals. It’s why they moved many OEM PC retailers to using oddball installations and “system restore disks” instead of just giving out regular OS installation CD’s. If Apple ties their OS to their hardware but also allows MS Windows to run on it as well, do you think MS will leave that situation alone? Note that Microsoft could “require” users to not have TPM, and it wouldn’t disturb one single current Windows user. For Microsoft to “tie” their OS to generic non-TPM PC hardware will cost them nothing in terms of lost sales.
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If that happens, Mac will still get shafted in the consumer market: you will have two different types of hardare to choose from again, and most people will buy Microsoft PC’s for the same reasons they are buying them now–wider market availability of hardare and software–due to lower cost–due to higher sales volumes. The only thing Mac will gain is a lot more software piracy; after all, if all the software is effectively “free” and you can crack it to run on either type of PC hardware, then why not just buy the cheaper hardware?..
The more I consider the way all this is unfolding, the more I am sure of two things: Apple PC’s are still going to cost more than non-Apple PC’s, and much-fewer people who will use Apple PC’s will have paid for the software. At the least, Apple is going to have to switch to using a much-more pervasive (and inconvenient) type of software licensing verification system than they have now.
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