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Sun did an rewrite and upgrade of Solaris into version 10 with quite a bit of reliability. All that work cost just under $300 million. Apple has over 100x that

Sun did an rewrite and upgrade of Solaris into version 10 with quite a bit of reliability. All that work cost just under $300 million. Apple has over 100x that money. You'd think they could at least afford the SDL & static analysis Microsoft was using if not a total rewrite of Mac OS X into the greatest OS ever made. They also have differentiators of usability, cool factor, UNIX support & privacy given Microsoft's turn with recent Windows. There's also a software ecosystem to further monetize & develop. Apple is screwing up big time in letting Mac OS languish.

brianwawok 10y ago
So what would the return on that money be? The dev market for laptops is X. The random Joe Sixpack market for iToys is 100x or 1000x. If they are going to invest some giant figure in development, it will be for Joe Sixpack toys and not the best OS to ever live. (That is if throwing money at the problem would actually make a better OS. I suspect Microsoft throws more money at OS than all the other OS companies combined. They still have some massive failures).
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  What would the return be on vertical integration that Apple does in general? About nothing vs good strategies for COTS acquisition and supply chain. So, why does Apple do these things? To reduce risk to brand or products caused by 3rd parties plus allow them to control key aspects of technology to benefit themselves. Similarly for Mac OS. The main alternatives to watering down experience of their developers or power users are a scheming competitor with history of screwing its own ecosystem up arbitrarily and Linux distros that are lame compared to Mac/UNIX experience. I say that as an Ubuntu user. If they want their own fabs and phones, it seems fitting to also ensure their desktop experience for developers or power users is similarly low risk or tuned to their needs. Redmond and Linux surely aren't.
  - johansch 10y ago
    It's not in the nature of operationally minded people to think long-term. They think about the next quarter, or at most towards the end of the current accounting year. To put it another way: all they do is tactics - not strategy.

brianwawok 10y ago

So what would the return on that money be? The dev market for laptops is X. The random Joe Sixpack market for iToys is 100x or 1000x. If they are going to invest some giant figure in development, it will be for Joe Sixpack toys and not the best OS to ever live. (That is if throwing money at the problem would actually make a better OS. I suspect Microsoft throws more money at OS than all the other OS companies combined. They still have some massive failures).

nickpsecurity 10y ago
What would the return be on vertical integration that Apple does in general? About nothing vs good strategies for COTS acquisition and supply chain. So, why does Apple do these things? To reduce risk to brand or products caused by 3rd parties plus allow them to control key aspects of technology to benefit themselves. Similarly for Mac OS. The main alternatives to watering down experience of their developers or power users are a scheming competitor with history of screwing its own ecosystem up arbitrarily and Linux distros that are lame compared to Mac/UNIX experience. I say that as an Ubuntu user. If they want their own fabs and phones, it seems fitting to also ensure their desktop experience for developers or power users is similarly low risk or tuned to their needs. Redmond and Linux surely aren't.
- johansch 10y ago
  It's not in the nature of operationally minded people to think long-term. They think about the next quarter, or at most towards the end of the current accounting year. To put it another way: all they do is tactics - not strategy.