Back to the Future

[MacBytes]

Category: Opinion/Interviews
Link: Back to the Future
Description:: none

Posted on MacBytes.com
Approved by Mudbug

[azentropy]

Interesting article.

They should have licensed the Mac OS MUCH earlier than they did, by the time they did it was too late and they did it wrong.

I don't think Apple should license the iPhone OS as that is a totally different eco-system, but Apple will make a similar mistake if they don't open up the iPhone to ALL carriers SOON. Face it, a significant reason someone choses a different smartphone over the iPhone is the carrier. I have dozen of friends/family who go with something else because they simply will NOT switch to or back to AT&T.

[jayducharme]

For most of the world, cheap machines that were "good enough" trumped Apple's pricier, perfectionist, control-freak approach.

Funny how so many people think something's wrong with Apple. The company has the highest profit margin in the industry and is doing quite fine financially. Jobs isn't trying to appeal to a mass market. Apple's market share has been growing, true, but not outrageously. If a company makes a product, it doesn't mean that the product has to appeal to everybody. Some companies are quite comfortable in a niche market.

[Tha Professor]

I don't even want Apple to get Windows like market share.. Windows had to bow down to needs of both IT skilled professionals and their secretaries that basically just play solitaire... I think staying niche has a long-time advantage... Just stay true to the mac-attitude and they will do fine...

[gctwnl]

Originally Posted by azentropy

Interesting article.

They should have licensed the Mac OS MUCH earlier than they did, by the time they did it was too late and they did it wrong.

I don't think Apple should license the iPhone OS as that is a totally different eco-system, but Apple will make a similar mistake if they don't open up the iPhone to ALL carriers SOON. Face it, a significant reason someone choses a different smartphone over the iPhone is the carrier. I have dozen of friends/family who go with something else because they simply will NOT switch to or back to AT&T.

It was not necessary to license the OS and that is not what brought Apple its troubles during the 90's. It was just that they weren't able to innovate enough and let's face it, the UI may have been nice for the time, but as an OS the classic OS was not a very good foundation for innovation. Bombs anyone?

What Apple seems to have done better this time around is to keep on working on long term innovation. The iPhone would not have been possible, if not for stuff that precedes it by years. It is not about licensing, it is about innovation. The App Store opens the iPhone to innovation by third parties, but the foundation needs to innovate as well to have really stunning innovations.

But the carrier is such an integral part of a phone experience, that it is indeed important. Same here: I would have bought an iPhone already, were it not that the single carrier I can choose has a hopeless coverage. I can understand that Apple needed the exclusivity deals to get into the market, after all the carriers partly has to adapt its systems to the iPhone. And it is logical that initially it were the second rates who saw this as an opportunity to attack number one. But as an established platform, Apple needs to drop exclusivity deals as fast as it can.

[maproduction]

While the OS is the driving force behind the hardware, it is the hardware that Apple wants to sell. Why do journalist not ever mention this or just gloss over this. Compare Apple to HP not just Microsoft. As a hardware company Apple is at the top of the pack, in numbers of units sold and most importantly in profits.

I want the complete package, elegant software wrapped around elegant hardware. With all its shortcomings Apple delivers this, on my Mac Pro, MacBook Pro and on my iPhone.

While others things have features that I would love to see come to the OS or iPhone, no one else comes close to the complete package like Apple.

[gctwnl]

Originally Posted by jayducharme

Funny how so many people think something's wrong with Apple. The company has the highest profit margin in the industry and is doing quite fine financially. Jobs isn't trying to appeal to a mass market. Apple's market share has been growing, true, but not outrageously. If a company makes a product, it doesn't mean that the product has to appeal to everybody. Some companies are quite comfortable in a niche market.

But some markets, espcially where interoperability or massive investments (think games) is important, require mass. If the mass switches to Android (which is possibly a good contender, given the various problems with Windows Mobile, Palm, and the business focus of RIM).