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The Mac vs. Windows comparison is imperfect of course, but as quick comparisons go I believe it's an excellent one and highly relevant. It doesn't necessarily i
by leoc 13y ago
The Mac vs. Windows comparison is imperfect of course, but as quick comparisons go I believe it's an excellent one and highly relevant. It doesn't necessarily imply that Apple is going to become unprofitable again (stock price declines are another matter): it's more likely to find itself back in its year-2000 holding position than it is to crash in the short or medium term.
You're right about the influence of the Mac as an app platform. In fact, while people tend to think of Microsoft as an OS company thanks to MS-DOS in many ways MS is fundamentally a Macintosh ISV (a good Macintosh ISV, mind you) with delusions of grandeur. But then again, all these companies and pieces of software moved fairly happily to Windows-first when the platform and the market was there for them.
You're right that the Jobs issue is largely a red herring at this stage.
- protomyth 13y agoApple was never the big loser to Microsoft. Commodore was the true loser if you are looking at market share. We get to talk about Apple because they survived and successfully transitioned to a new product line. Commodore couldn't do that with the Amiga.
- leoc 13y agoLikely yes, but what of it? The argument from the Windows/Mac analogy is that iOS is probably headed for some level of niche status. It's not even that Apple is necessarily toast (though they certainly came near to it in '97). That Commodore got toasted even harder shouldn't invalidate that argument. (Commodore's trajectory was weird anyway. They were gone before Win95, and they were arguably killed as much by the XOR patent, the Atari-Commodore bloodletting, Sega and Nintendo or DOOM as by the IBM PC or Windows 3.1.) Maybe RIM is the new Commodore? ;)
- protomyth 13y agoI guess my argument is the Windows/Mac analogy was always false. The Mac was a machine that has kept trending upward in numbers sold for many, many years never starting with some dominant position to lose. The Mac never lost its market share to Windows because it didn't have it to lose. Beyond that, I really don't think any of the old thinking actually applies to the current cellphone market as the software exclusivity problems of the PC era are not really an issue these days. The whole environment has changed and the connections matter more. In other words, we are closer to cars than PCs since so much of what we do is actually standardized (text, call, web browse) like roads and gas.