Is Apple Doing All It Can to Beat Vista?

aalobode writes "The New York Times is running an article on the narrowing window that Apple has for beating Microsoft's Vista. According the Times, not enough has been done to capitalize on the Mac user experience versus the 'world of hurt that is Vista'. It also points out that that restructuring of Apple leaves ambiguities about Apple's exact commitment to the computer end of its business. The article calls MS Vista's certified vendors, developers and driver writers a flywheel that takes a while coming up to speed - and then becomes unstoppable."

service pack

Once SP1 hits, the flywheel's going to spin a LOT faster.

Re:service pack

"Seriously, why would you want to buy a Mac if you can have Ubuntu, apart from Adobe/Macromedia products?"

Oh, I don't know, Apple products? Ableton products? Native Instruments products? Steinberg products? Propellorhead products? Corel products? Quartz? Colour matching built right into the drawing engine? A whole slew of audio, video, modeling, graphics, typesetting and printing (as in not your rgb inkjet) and media applications?

"UI looks as funky (if not funkier), more available software, albeit most of it is OSS or free."

"Looks". Heh. It's never been about how the UI looks. The UI is more or less the same as it's been since System 7. It's about how the UI _works_, it's about how the UI acts and feels, it's about integration, simplicity and slickness. It's about doing what it does and doing it responsively with a minimal resources. I'll guarantee you that KDE won't be nearly responsive on a 233 G3 w/ 192mb ran as Tiger was. Only people who don't actually use Macs figure that it's how the UI looks. (and I'll concede, I think Enlightenment 17, and certain KDE setups are allot prettier, but neither works as NextStep did, and OS X does.) These are the same people who pitch compiz as the greatest thing since the colour monitor, sure it looks pretty, but it in no way boosts functionality, and all it exists for is to look pretty. And lets not forget the CLI, all the power under the hood of a full-out POSIX compliant BSD core, and weather or not you ever actually use the command shell is entirely a matter of preference and choice, and that's how it *should* be.

"more available software, albeit most of it is OSS or free."

Again, it's fairly clear you've never actually used a Mac. Fink (apt for Darwin), and DarwinPorts offer the free software. What, you thought the POSIX compliant, BSD core was for show? Ad don't forget all the wonderful non-free software availible for the platform. How's that for choice, you get your pick from the best of both worlds.

"The only good thing about Macs is the look of the case, and even THAT is a matter of taste."

SGI cases were prettier, but I digress. If all you're doing is checking emails, word processing and some dev work, Ubuntu is fine. But once you get to any level of _serious_ creative work, Macintosh is the only viable option left with the demise of Irix. And let's not forget the bit about everything working with minimal hassle on the Mac. Ever tried using a graphics tablet as your core pointer in Ubuntu? Or using a KAOS pad? Or just about any higher end, vaguely exotic multimedia hardware, for that matter? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Just as an FWI, I've used various Unices for the past 15 years (Irix, Solaris, AIX, Free/Open BSD, Interix, Linux, and Darwin/OSX) Linux for close to 10. But there's this way of thinking tat doesn't seem to be too common these days, "using the best tool for the job". Linux has it's uses, serious creative work isn't one of them. It may be good enough for what YOU do, but don't assume that everyone else's needs match your own. And for fuck's sake, if you're going to criticize something, use it first. You read like one of those pointless Linux distro reviews that bases the whole thing on the install sequence, then offers a generic gnome screenshot, and somehow thinks there's anything even remotely useful in the article.

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Not trying to threadjack here but....

You read like one of those pointless Linux distro reviews that bases the whole thing on the install sequence, then offers a generic gnome screenshot, and somehow thinks there's anything even remotely useful in the article.

I'm afraid that for the majority of Linux users, there is nothing more to their experience than this, and maybe tooling around in cfg files for 25 hours before they are finished and have nothing left to do with their computer after setting it up. That's something of a norm for hobbyist OS's. The fun comes from the challenge of making it all work and once you've completed that, well, there is IRC for a while...

It took me some time to realize that was going on with my own Linux interests. And it's fine, but for real computer uses this isn't fun anymore. When it takes several hours of research and hacking to make any random new thing work, the OS isn't doing its job anymore. It's this aspect of Linux that made me pick OS X.

With those who stick with Linux, despite how many obviously and infuriatingly stupid design choices are made, with some of the most painfully conservative backers and developers, you get this response that it's somehow the solution for every problem. It's human nature, it seems, as programmers tend to do the same thing with the one or two languages they know.

When the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.

When the only OS you accept is a disorganized mess, then every use for an OS is acceptably accomplished with immense hassle, religious indoctrination, and massive time consumption.

With this mode of thinking you can come to expect every positive point you make about another OS to receive baffling responses of "you can do that just as easily with..." Furthermore, don't even bother mentioning Windows doing a better job at anything, ever, unless you want to induce so much frothing at the mouth that the whole discussion fills with foam.

Of course, at this point you'll get all the beautifully pointless tautological arguments about how things are bad because they don't work on The One OS. How could you possible want to use anything besides Ogg since clearly that's the best choice as now that so many distributors of Linux have become fearful of patent issues, they will no longer distribute support for MP3. In fact, mp3 is clearly the worst choice because Ogg is the best choice because Linux is the best choice because RMS told you so.

Seriously, there is little or no basis in these arguments. That coupled with an intense fear of participating in the market to acquire anything, software, or media alike, results in some very bizarre "discussions" about what's good at what in the OS world.

And remember, this is an online discussion which means people are far less likely to yield to logical retorts. When these discussions happen in person, they tend to go more succinctly to the real issue at hand. After point and counterpoint for a while, anyone who I talk to about this issue "Why use OS X vs. Linux vs. Windows" always boils down to "It costs too much for mac hardware to use the OS." Yeah, there's a price barrier. Save your money folks, it's worth waiting a little longer. I cannot believe the blind resistance to paying for good software or hardware. I don't understand why these guys are so afraid to buy things. You would think they would value their time enough to pay a little cash to recuperate so much of their time. But, I guess that leads back to my first paragraph in this response, so I'll leave it at this.

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I don't understand why these guys are so afraid to buy things.

Um. I bought my hardware for my PC, and my laptop, and they're both quality machines without paying Apple prices. Apple sells the brand as much as the hardware. We're talking about a company that charges $200 more for a black MacBook (with some trivial HDD upgrade).

As for paying for quality software -- I run Ubuntu on both machines. I did not spend 25 hours with config files in either case, and I didn't struggle to make it work then do nothing with the computer. Saying that the majority do and then "have nothing left to do" is simply erroneous. I feel that Ubuntu is better quality software than Windows XP, and much better than Vista.

Now, for some other points from your post:

When it takes several hours of research and hacking to make any random new thing work, the OS isn't doing its job anymore. It's this aspect of Linux that made me pick OS X.

I don't know when the last time you used Linux was, but it never took me several hours to get anything working in Ubuntu. Slackware, yes, but that's why Slackware isn't recommended for those new to Linux.

With this mode of thinking you can come to expect every positive point you make about another OS to receive baffling responses of "you can do that just as easily with..."

Well, of course. Why should someone use features easily available in one OS to praise another?

Furthermore, don't even bother mentioning Windows doing a better job at anything, ever, unless you want to induce so much frothing at the mouth that the whole discussion fills with foam.

Other than games, I can't think of anything Windows is better for...

In fact, mp3 is clearly the worst choice because Ogg is the best choice because Linux is the best choice because RMS told you so.

This sort of backhanded sarcasm may be why you get foaming at the mouth. The reason they don't distribute MP3 by default is because most Linux distributions don't profit on their releases, and can't afford to get around the patent issue. Also, considering there are a great many Linux users who dislike RMS, accusing them of blindingly following him might tick them off a bit. I know that line ticked me off a little. I usually use Ogg, but I could give a fig what RMS says.

Seriously, there is little or no basis in these arguments.

And little in yours, as well. Most people who use Linux aren't into "religious indoctrination." I imagine many who use Linux also dual-boot, and thus, at some point paid for software.

Also, considering all your talk about paying for software, I certainly hope you pay for all your music and other entertainment and don't pirate anything...

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I think you may be missing some of the point that a lot of open source advocates try to make - likely because they tend to froth at the mouth, yes.

In the OGG situation, think of it this way: everyone can use OGG. EVERYONE. Apple, Microsoft, everyone. The reason they don't? Because they can just support MP3 (which at some point may decide to charge out the ass for its use), WMA, whatever. If we could get the majority of consumers using OGG, Microsoft and Apple would have to jump on board and we are guaranteed interoperability from any platform be it free or not. You will never get that with proprietary patent-encumbered formats. That's a darn good reason to encourage the use of OGG if you ask me.

As far as OSX goes - I own a mac mini. I used OSX, and it frustrated me. I did not appreciate the way many decisions were made for me and many options were hidden. It took me a lot longer to get simple things done. I installed Ubuntu on it and appreciated having full power to do what I want.

So no, it doesn't always boil down to "a mac costs too much, blah blah" - I bought a mac, it frustrated the shit out of me, I stuck Linux on it and I've never looked back.

You're right that the open source community has a lot of zealotry, but believe it or not it also has a lot of legitimate fans won over by time saved and problems solved.

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Only people who don't actually use Macs figure that it's how the UI looks. (and I'll concede, I think Enlightenment 17, and certain KDE setups are allot prettier, but neither works as NextStep did, and OS X does.) These are the same people who pitch compiz as the greatest thing since the colour monitor, sure it looks pretty, but it in no way boosts functionality, and all it exists for is to look pretty.

I agree with the parent post for the most part, but hey: only people who have never used Compiz figure that it's all about how it looks. Sure it looks pretty, sure it has tons of eye-candy, sure you can see spinning cubes all over YouTube and the like. And that is beside the point.

The point with Compiz is that is is a compositing window manager platform. Compiz isn't the effects. Compiz is the platform. Even GUI people seem to miss this.

You cannot hail OS X GUI and dismiss Compiz in the same sentence. Compiz is what brings things like Exposè, window grouping, "live" thumbnail preview etc. to the OSS world. Those things are doubtless useful in the sense that they let you do your work more efficiently. If you get stuck on viewing Compiz as the "spinning cube that nerds take screenshots of", you'll be missing the point. Of course, one has to drill down through the configuration and disable all those flashy no-good effects such as flaming windows and windows that pop up on cube rotation, water, snow, etc. etc. Such things will happen when you have a bunch of talented people working on a software product that lets you do cool stuff; you can't expect everybody to focus on usability only. Still, usability is what lies at the core of Compiz.

The most important thing about Compiz, for the GUI people at least, is that it is an open architecture which you can use to design and usability-test different GUI paradigms. We shouldn't be afraid of trying out new things, even if we are aware that they may never become mainstream. Many GUI paradigms never became "mainstream"; heck, even Mac's "one-menu-bar-at-the-top-of-the-screen" paradigm is not mainstream, if you count its occurrences in the entire population of desktop/laptop computers worldwide! And yet it is considered more usable. Therefore, GUI people should be happy that they now have a toy to try out new paradigms for themselves.

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God bless you.

Slashdot is full of people who type plaintext for a living and seem to think that that is all anyone does with their computers. As long as there's a working keyboard driver, they're happy. The suggestion that I (or my friends who do design, or my parents who use enterprise software, or my colleagues who do stats) could make do with Linux is laughable. In my case, I have a very hard time even using a Mac, because of the statistical packages I use, only SPSS (which I use infrequently, but is essential) has a Mac version, and it doesn't even run on Intel (yet). I have all these packages running on XP in VMware Fusion on my Mac laptop (which I have been extremely impressed by).

Further, I'd like to point out that those "pointless Linux distro reviews" never explain how to get, say, your nVidia card to spit out more than 640x480 (the problem which stymied me last time I tried Linux), or how to get wifi to work, or any of the real problems you actually have after install.

Bah. My sig is sufficient to communicate my basic opinion.

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The only good thing about Macs is the look of the case, and even THAT is a matter of taste.

Bullshit. First of all: This is not about Linux not being all you make it out to be. Your depiction seems accurate, and desktop Linux distributions are continuously improving. This is about Macs being put down. I've used a Mac for a number of years now, sliding over to using it full time (in the place of Windows + Linux where I used Linux mostly for server stuff) and I can testament that it's not just about the look of the case.

The number one reason I use a Mac is not to get to act all "look at me, I'm special" or to pay more for my computers. It is because of the applications and the operating system. Some of the third party Mac applications are, in my opinion, unsurpassed in their genre on any platform. Like the app I'm writing this in - NetNewsWire, a feed reader (full disclosure: I'm a beta tester, but I'm not saying nice things because I'm a beta tester, I'm a beta tester because I like the app so much). Generalization is dangerous, but paying more attention to detail, especially in the user interface, seems more pervasive on Mac OS X than on any other OS.

I am a developer. I'll admit it: my bread-and-butter today is (and has been for the last year or so) .NET. I love Perl and Ruby and PHP, and I can use them as good on OS X as on any other OS (and significantly easier than on Windows). But I also really like Cocoa and Objective-C, and I believe it's a good example of what .NET could have become had they actively tried to keep the class count down. You can't really claim "marketing" or "RDF" on developer APIs - you start to notice as soon as you use it, and while Cocoa might seem eclectic at the start, it works really well.

There's also a level of chutzpah in the frequent OS updates that I appreciate, even if I have to shell out $129 before rebates every two years or so. When was the last time your OS added automatic backups with one-button setup (and easy full-disk restoration), a layer animation engine and resolution independence in an update? They're also following existing standards (like CalDAV, Open Directory and soon ZFS) - or creating extensions or new standards and publishing them and open source implementations (like HFS+ and launchd) - almost across the board (yes, except for anything possibly involving DRM where they have to deal with the **AAs; I don't like that any more than anyone else). I think the best thing I can say about the operating system and software is that I'd rather use Mac OS X in a regular PC than I would use Ubuntu or Vista in a MacBook.

There's tons of valid points of criticism for Apple, for their computers and for Mac OS X. None of this passes me by unnoticed. QuickTime Pro and .Mac upsell offers are persistent and horrible, for one thing. They're not perfect. But putting off Macs and Mac OS X by the blanket statement "The only good thing about Macs is the look of the case" is simply unfair.

Re:service pack

I see where you're coming from. I also guess your problem with OS X doesn't end with these specific problems. I'm not here to make or break anyone's opinion on OS X vs Gentoo based on a few specific problems (nor, actually, to cast it into a 'vs' scenario in the first place).

But I must ask: did you try to research the "OS X" way to do it before you tried the Linux way to do it? If you didn't, why not? Because a quick search for NFS in Mac Help brought up four topics about mounting network shares; Go -> Connect to Server in Finder and entering "nfs://servername/pathname". You're now going to say that "well, then it won't connect on startup", at which point I will ask you to go into System Preferences, Accounts, select your account, go to the Login Items tab, click the + button and choose the mount.

The reason I asked the first question was because it wasn't much harder in OS X than in UNIX variants that use fstab - if you're used to fstab, it's a minor inconvenience to push a bunch of buttons, and if you're sitting down in front of any sort of UNIX for the first time (or the second time), editing a text file to do so simply isn't going to occur to you. This doesn't make your experience with OS X any less annoying in hindsight, of course, and it doesn't mean that you had a worse time with it than with Gentoo. And it certainly doesn't mean that OS X is now on equal footing with Gentoo as a capable OS for you personally. Your investment in how Linux traditionally works and where you go to edit, install, configure and fix things is only partially applicable on OS X, for example. But it's something to think about.

Additionally, not to cast any blame, and just to clarify, if you happened upon a Firefox extension that didn't work with your applications on Gentoo, but that worked with applications on Windows or OS X, you wouldn't blame Gentoo, you'd think that the Firefox extension was written with another platform in mind, and find an alternative. Naturally.

Re:service pack

You are right, once you let someone with lots of Linux experience lose on MacOS X, things start to break.

You say that no matter what you did, you couldn't get to mount NFS shares on her Macintosh. Did you try the following steps:

1. Go to the Finder.
2. Select the "Mac Help" item in the "Help" menu.
3. Type in "NFS share" into the search box and hit the return key.
4. Follow the instructions given?

Re:service pack

"Seriously, why would you want to buy a Mac if you can have Ubuntu, apart from Adobe/Macromedia products?"

First off, I'm typing this post on my Ubuntu Fiesty desktop. That said, I've also got a MacBook running OSX, which I absolutely love. The reason why I have a Mac? It's all about the apps. Most of the apps that I use on a regular basis in my workflow are free, awesome, and Cocoa or otherwise Mac-only. I'm thinking particularly of Quicksilver, Journler, iGTD, and Skim. There just aren't apps of these types that work this cleanly (and work *together* this cleanly) available for Ubuntu (at least, afaik--I'm happy to be proven wrong).

That said, there are some apps that I run on my Ubuntu box that beat the pants off of anything with a similar function for OSX. Amarok, for instance, so far outstrips iTunes (and anything else I can find for OSX) that it's not even funny. Long story short? As to the question: "Why buy a Mac when you can have Ubuntu?" The answer is: Get the best tools for the job. It just so happens that, for many of the jobs that I do (and the way I like to do them) the best tools I've found are available only for OSX.

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More Windows games work under Wine than you can buy for a Macintosh.

The number of games that work perfectly under Wine is dwarfed by the number of native Mac games. Wine is seriously overrated.

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You bought your PC for the operating system, because if you were buying the right OS for Adobe apps you'd have bought a Mac. Instead you're using Mac key shortcuts on software that was ported from the Mac, and you're missing color management and workflow integration just to name two things. And you gained viruses and worms and you have to dual boot to get at Unix. You're not hurting Adobe, you're hurting yourself.

At Photoshop conferences I always get asked by PC users "how long does Photoshop take to start up on the Mac?" and I'm like "I don't know, I just leave it running all the time" and one guy asked me once what "lightweight image editor" do I use when Photoshop is not running. Again, it's always running. Why would it not be running? "System resources" was the answer. If Photoshop is not running and you need an image editor, why wouldn't you run it? "Takes a long time to start up." Meanwhile at those same conferences, the Photoshop+Mac users are talking about airbrush techniques and color correction philosophies. Guess who is really getting work done?

Re:service pack

> Seriously, why would you want to buy a Mac if you can have Ubuntu, apart from Adobe/Macromedia products?

That is crazy talk.

If your main application, the core of your computing, is a text editor, then Ubuntu is a gift because you can run your text editor on an entirely free stack and have a much better experience than Windows. For a Web engineer for example, the text editor, Apache, PHP, Firefox, and Unix are killer apps and all free.

But if your main application is anything with graphics or publishing or audio or video you are so much better on the Mac. That's where the tools are for that stuff. In the same way that Ubuntu makes your text editor better by adding Apache, PHP, Firefox, and Unix, the Mac adds all kinds of stuff to your Photoshop, or publishing tools, or music or audio tools. Your 32 channels of 24-bit 96kHz digital audio don't glitch on the Mac, and your 24-bit mixes play in all of your apps, and your virtual effects and instruments work in all of your apps, and you can run two Digital Audio Workstations at once (e.g. Logic and Live, which I do) and they share your pro audio hardware automatically and everything just works. You make music you don't do any IT, that is done at the factory. They spent the last 20 years building in support for pro audio, how long has Ubuntu been working in music and audio?

Photoshop and an Art Tablet and a Mac and a visual artist is on top of the world, takes above 20 minutes to set that all up from scratch, the majority of the time you are watching the Photoshop installer run. When you're done it all just works, even RGB color spaces are managed for you. And you can fly around the interface with the one-button Art Pen and no mouse. The Art Tablet is $299 and includes a coupon for the full Photoshop for $299 more, and a MacBook is $1200 and you want for nothing. That's the full pixel airbrush nirvana. If you have to take a second job to make up the difference from an Ubuntu system then do it. Even if you are a beginner, if you apply yourself for three years with that $1800 art toolkit you'll be working professionally with them somewhere for real money. The $1800 you paid will make your friend's college loans look ridiculous.

It's way past time to get over the idea that all computers are the same. They're more different than ever. Offering Ubuntu as an alternative system for media work, music and audio, video, graphics, publishing, that is just doing a huge disservice to those users, pretending Ubuntu has something to offer them. It's also doing a disservice to the Ubuntu project who are offering a really good system to an entirely different set of users.

Re:service pack

I second your opinion, but I also want to point out the hard work done by Linux Audio Developers.

For one, they pushed the development of preemptible and low-latency Linux kernel to make it possible to do low-latency stuff, even on relatively aged hardware. Mac OS X's micro-kernel architecture is potentially superior in this regard because you can easily go hard real-time with micro-kernels (Linux is a monolithic kernel), but Linux kernel is more suitable than Windows XP for running audio applications because of these improvements.

They also obsoleted OSS (open sound system) and came up with ALSA [alsa-project.org], which makes it easier to support new sound devices from the developer's point of view. ALSA supports a range of consumer to professional sound cards, just like CoreAudio. It just works.

Another notable framework, JACK [jackaudio.org], goes beyond CoreAudio by providing audio routing between applications, like ReWire. JACK is also available on Mac OS X, except it is less robust than on Linux. Thrashing can cause audio drop-out because Mac OS X kernel can't lock pages in real memory.

Finally, if you ever considered audio production work on Linux, you definitely know about Ardour [ardour.org] at some point. It's the hard work of Paul Davis, working on it unemployeed and full-time for many years. Ardour also runs on Mac OS X, by the way, because of the generous nature of Linux developers for offering you a choice.

If you do mostly recording, then you can get by on Linux quite sufficiently. If you do a lot of synthesized stuff like Reason or NI, then you'll be disappointed. There is simply no comparable app on Linux.

------

On the other hand, Linux has a lot of architecture catch-up on the graphics stack. Cairo [cairographics.org] recently has some talk about supporting more color spaces than RGB. However, the lack of end-to-end color management is a serious issue. Colors you see on the screen simply will look different when printed out. The colors are also not even consistent from monitor to monitor.

One thing I'm really impressed with Mac OS X is its monitor calibration. It lets you fine tune gamma by inspecting the monitor response in highlight, mid-tone and shadow for red, green and blue. I can easily color-match two monitors by different manufacturers.

Mac OS X also has superior built-in typesetting support, completely unparalleled by any operating system, and this is available in any application even TextEdit. In TextEdit, you can already turn on common ligatures like "fi" and "fl" as you type. In comparison, you must insert ligature glyphs manually when using Microsoft Word. Mac OS X supports more typesetting feature than that. For example, the Hoefler font has an archaic font variant with a "long s" (so congress looks more like congrefs where the f has shorter middle bar---the s at the end of the word remains the usual form because the long s is a contextual ligature that happens only in the middle of a word) and the "st ligature" (there is a small hook that goes from the top end of s to the top stem of t). Needless to say, contextual ligature is a crucial feature to support scripts like Arabic.

Mac OS X definitely has received a lot of attention in the aesthetics that goes way beyond eye candy.

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What a shilly comment...

Yes, because obviously everyone who disagrees with you must be being paid by Microsoft to do so.

Look, let's be honest -- Vista isn't bad. It may not be as pretty as OS X, but it's got the most attractive UI Microsoft has ever produced, and on modern hardware it runs beautifully fast, is very stable, and is far more compatible with previous versions of Windows than anyone gives it credit for. (On compatibility, I just can't help remembering all the whining that went on when XP was released and didn't run all DOS programs perfectly. We've been here before, guys. We got over it.)

Note that, far from being a Microsoft shill, I'm saying this as someone who divides most of his computing time between Ubuntu and Solaris, and has a Mac Mini perched on top of his primary desktop PC. I use Vista when I want to play games or to test programs on Windows. I'm a pragmatist who values having different tools for different jobs... and I have to say, I wish there were more of us around. This constant bickering and zealotry is nothing if not tedious.

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Look, let's be honest -- Vista isn't bad. It may not be as pretty as OS X, but it's got the most attractive UI Microsoft has ever produced, and on modern hardware it runs beautifully fast, is very stable, and is far more compatible with previous versions of Windows than anyone gives it credit for.

Running "beautifully fast" on modern hardware is what it's supposed to do. You don't get extra credit for not fucking up. Running "beautifully fast" on modern hardware is somewhere between "I've never been to jail" and "I shower daily" on the list of human accomplishment. Not that bragworthy.

On compatibility, I just can't help remembering all the whining that went on when XP was released and didn't run all DOS programs perfectly. We've been here before, guys. We got over it.

By the same token, it was years after XP came out that it was worthwhile to switch from Windows 2000. Maybe Vista will be worthwhile around the time Windows 7 comes out.

world of hurt?

Yes, vista has a few issues. Note: Few. I've been running it since March, and there's no way XP is going back on my box, at least not exclusively.

I've been tempted to buy a Mac, but I game - and for the cost of a 17" Imac with pretty crappy video, I recently built a Core2 Quad 2.4ghz, 2gb ram, 500gb disk, Geforce 8800GTS, etc.

If apple were to release a PowerMac chassis at a slightly less inflated price, i'd be pretty keen... but double the cost of what I built? No thanks...

Re:world of hurt?

I call BS. I use a mini as my primary workstation. I have a Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo, mind you...) and I have yet to feel that it is "slow" in any regard. Now realize the first thing I did was max out the RAM on it, but still. A mini in name only. The only thing you can't do is expand it with internal devices. Given that limitation, it is WELL worth the money spent.

Re:world of hurt?

Microsoft seems to use them too:

http://davidweiss.blogspot.com/2006/04/tour-of-microsofts-mac-lab.html [blogspot.com]

Sure it is their Mac labs, but to see 150 together is quite something.

Re:world of hurt?

Yes, vista has a few issues. Note: Few.

Its not a question of how many issues there are, its a question of perception. Neither 98 nor XP were significantly different at 1 year old compared to 3 years old, but the perception of them changed massively in that time.

In all likelyhood that pattern will repeat with Vista.

Steve picked the Phone over the PC

Steve Jobs has picked the iPhone as Apple's next platform. Maybe he should of focused on getting Leopard out this year to steal Vistas thunder. Only time will tell if he has made the right choice.

Re:Steve picked the Phone over the PC

I think he made the right call there. Microsoft won the desktop war. Get over it, move on. The desktop era is ending; there's maybe a decade left in it. The ubicomp era is just starting, and Microsoft has enough money to buy a decent amount of market share. Currently, they're sitting at around 7%, and it's going to take a lot of effort to keep them as a minority player. Diverting any energy to re-fighting the desktop war is a waste of effort.

Re:Steve picked the Phone over the PC

The desktop era is ending[..]

How is that? Agreed, when I'm on the move I will naturally turn to handheld devices that can offer basic services (multimedia playing, communication, web browsing). But there's no way I'm going to resort to them when I need actual work done, or for serious entertainment purposes. They're good to keep you going from one place to another, but for productivity's sake I will need to sit at a desk, use a full size keyboard, a normal mouse, and enjoy a large screen and sensible performance. And if I want to watch movies or play games I will also require the kind of hardware that doesn't travel easily.

Furthermore, that desktop computer paradigm itself is very hard to surpass. There are specialized devices that offer niche services (multimedia players, game consoles, handhelds, laptops), and there are desktop computers, which can be used for anything. That versatility is very hard to throw aside. Niche devices come and go, but a universal purpose device like the desktop computer will be around for a lot of time.

The only possible change I foresee is extreme miniaturization, which would at some point reduce the desktop computer to something like a pen that you take out of your pocket, place on the desk and it expands to a full size interface (keyboard, mouse, display, or all in one). Perhaps using holography and motion sensors. But for all practical reasons that kind of thing is a long way from the mainstream.

Portable stuff

I think that the place where Apple design realy shines is in portable stuff. Both their iPod and laptop lines seem to be good examples. I have seen a lot of people switch to Apple laptops the last two years.

I was never too thrilled about their iMac, it seems that in the desktop arena, Apple design does not give so much of an edge, and their only advantage (and disadvantage) is their OS.

Re:Portable stuff

Most software has no idea whether you're using a SATA hard drive as opposed to IDE. It's called abstraction, and code reuse. The only thing caused by legacy hardware support, which is what we are talking about here, is bloated OSes, and security vulnerabilities from there being too much code to maintain. Also, on the software front. Why should the OS contain so much code just to run old legacy apps like MS Works 2. Granted I think that windows goes about the whole legacy software support in the wrong way. There should just be emulators for old OSes and hardware, like Apple did the two times it switched CPU architectures, instead of having to put tons of code in the main OS to support old software that most people don't use anymore.

Re:of course it's not

apple tried that it nearly bankrupted the company. Selling an OS without a monopoly is unprofitable. why else do you think that only free software OS's have been able to make in roads while every single other for profit OS company is just about gone?

Without a monopoly no matter how gained selling just an OS will fail. Apple is worth more than Dell because they keep things locked down, and stay out of the cut throat market of cheap hardware.

Re:of course it's not

"Apple will never be able to really compete with Vista (or Microsoft) as long as they insist on being a hardware company before all. "

And from this, we can draw the inference that Apple just doesn't want to tackle Vista head-on. They've got a model that works; it's given them (mostly) happy customers, a fabulous brand image, happy shareholders, and several hojillion dollars in the bank. Why would they want to risk their brand image and their long-term profitability by diverting the resources to run on a zillion different hardware platforms?

Someday OS X (or its successor) will come out for all PCs. But that's (probably) not going to happen while PC hardware still a big profit center for Apple.

Apple is not widely avbl. or supported outside US

Not even 5% of the availability or support for Linux distros, in any case.

In the US, in any market; the marketshare is something like this:

Top 3 or 4 vendors: 80%
All the rest share the balance 20%

In Europe, I believe in all sectors except the IT sector, the top vendors collectively share less than 50% market share - thanks to strict measures to combat monopoly and anti-trust issues.

In India (where I live) the only desktop s/w that as any sizable usage is Tally (a financial accounting s/w). All other appln. s/w have a very fragmented marketplace; and it's nearly a 50-50 split between desktop, .Net and ASP apps on the one hand; and Web-based apps on the other, mainly on Linux servers. Apple Macs have less than 1% presence in the h/w space; so there's no incentive for s/w development on the Mac platform.

Last week, I was evaluating a PACS solution for the hospital I consult with - and a s/w vendor suggested Osirix - an open source app. that works only on Mac hardware. We will be implementing this shortly. A few years back, SGI had products in this niche, but they have disappeared now (I used to work for an SGI dealer).

Apple did try to set up shop in India, but strangely packed up and dismissed the thought a few months later. Unless Apple build up their presence in the hardware segment; they will not be a meaningful alternative to the Windows world - Vista or otherwise. Except in miniscule niche segments perhaps.

Here's an idea: get newspapers to write free ads!

With the New York Times putting fawning articles like this in front of millions of readers every day, why would Apple want to spend money to do the same?

As a lifelong Apple fanboy (all Apple since 1982, thanks), I can say without a doubt that there's not been a better time to be an Apple fanboy in 20 years. We actually have some street cred now. IT departments no longer laugh dismissively at the idea of perhaps a Mac in the office, maybe. (Though corporate America is a long way from embracing Macs. And Apple originally lost the PC war because most consumers bought what they had at work for home (and, hey, it was a little cheaper).) People are actually buying Macs. Sales are up; growth is up. The article makes a big deal of Apple not starting its relationship with Best Buy soon enough to gain a retail presence. Hello? NYT, two years ago Apple barely had the cred and was still working on retail presence for the iPod. I bought my iPod at Target; I've vowed never to buy so much as a blank CD at Best Buy after some of its shady business practices, and if Apple wanted to just make the Mac available to more people, it'd sell them everywhere the iPods are sold. How far away is that? Well, they'd have to be able to make enough Macs to put them there, but I bet we'll see it someday.

apple doesn't care about beating windows

and hasn't since Jobs took over. There was a period when Apple's main goal was to increase market share. When they licensed the mac os to run on third party hardware (I have a mac clone from back in the day). It almost killed apple.

Ultimately, to take any significant chunk of the PC space, apple would need to start releasing hardware on a much smaller profit margin in order to compete with Dell, Gateway, Acer, and Lenovo. This would destroy Apple's profits and company, as the Apple clones fiasco empirically demonstrated.

On the other hand, Apple's current strategy of releasing high profile hardware to a niche market has done phenominally well for them. They've stayed profitable, and have boosted their marketshare to an incredible high compared to historical values.

If you'd bought apple stock and google stock at the time google went IPO, your apple stock would have outperformed your google stock by 3 or 4 times. Apple is doing *very* well and has no incentive to move away from their current low volume, high profit margin strategy. They are essentially skimming the creme of the consumer crop with their products.

Platform of choice.

Silly people. Jobs was talking about this numerous times.

Apple never targeted broad audience. True, it can sell to very broad audience, but still Apple prefer to have few but loyal customers.

What also crossed my mind, is difference between Windows/Vista and Mac OS X. How does MacOS becomes platform of choice? Because you have to choose MacOS (as well as Apple hardware) by yourself. This establishes kind of barrier. But people who would cross the barrier are people who made their choice. The barrier works both ways: it takes some money investment to cross it (acquire hardware/software) and it takes some paining experience to come back to Wintel (which lacks all the polish, integrity and utility of Apple offering). But still, you are to make the choice by yourself.

And now ask yourself, who of us had chosen Windows?? Right, nobody. It's the thing which came preinstalled.

Apple can't sell HW to everybody

OSX won't replace Windows anytime soon because it's tied with the Mac and only Apple can make and sell a Mac. There is no way Apple can manufacture as many Macs as the Windows-PCs made by Dell, HP & Co. Ff everybody stop buying Windows-PC and go buying Macs, there simply won't be enough offer to meet the demand. Prices will skyrocket or delivery times will get impossibly long and most people will have to buy PCs no matter what.

OSX can replace Windows only if Apple sells it as Microsoft does, but that means becoming a software company and compete with other manufacturers for the hardware, and likely lose the HW market. Remember what happened when Mac clones started to be successful in the past? Apple shut them down.

Probably Apple is still not interested to change its business model and is happy with OSX being a niche OS, maybe a large niche, but still a niche compared with Windows market share. After all the revenues aren't that bad and MS has no particular reason to look at them as particularly dangerous. I suppose they're thinking, we're making a lot of easy money now, so why take risks and change?

Re:Apple can't sell HW to everybody

I think you are correct thinking Apple is happy being where they are. I've been a Mac user for 20 years, and this niche is plenty big enough to handle 100% of my home computing needs and about 99% of my business needs. I for one am happy that Apple's first company goal is to produce the best product possible. Anything else would be selling out (which I believe they've saved for the iPod divisions..not that those are bad, but they seem to apply a more aggressive business model there).

The problem with EVERY market-share study is they are diluting the Mac presence by including their count in areas they have no interest in being. Whereas a PC is a cheap whore that will do anything for money, Macs tend to be made for personal/home use. If Apple wanted to get into the big businesses, I doubt they'd ship things not needed in big business, such as iTunes and GarageBand. To fix this misrepresenatation of Mac market share, why don't these consulting firms just look at a category called "personal computing" or "home computing". I'm sure Apple would be closer to the 20% range in the States, and closer to 50% in metropolitan areas.

I CAN use a Mac at work, but trying to get all the tightly controlled computer things to work on my Mac (even in Windows mode) isn't worth it. Not because the computer doesn't play along well, but because the tech idiots at work freak out and act like I'm some sort of anti-christ hooking up a MacBook Pro to a windows network. If they'd let me, I'd just do it myself, but these control freaks have to write a work order up for something as simple as hooking my laptop up to the LAN-drop if I move cubicles for the day.

In short, Apple doesn't want to dominate the corporate because it would diminish the quality of their home-user products, and the IT world doesn't like the threat of losing their power.

Re:Apple can't sell HW to everybody

Obviously you were never in charge of an IT organization. These control freaks are attempting to keep the business network running reliably. ... The IT folks are not here to grant your technological wishes.

Well, I have been in charge of IT (for a small company, granted) and I have to say, your post reflects a fundamental, dangerous, and regrettably common misunderstanding of what corporate IT is for. The purpose of IT is not IT; the purpose of IT is to enable users to get things done. And if users can get things done better on Macs, then by God, it's IT's job to support those Macs. And "support" does not mean willful ignorance -- the latter, unfortunately, being what a lot of shake'n'bake IT techs show any time the word "Apple" is mentioned in their presence.

The world of hurt that is vista

Ha! That reminds me of one of my vary favorite jokes.

An old Penny Arcade shows Tycho in a wrestling ring being beat to a pulp by a guy labeled "Windows XP upgrade" (ok the picture is allegorical) and he's calling out to Gabe, "Why? You told me this would be easy, an hour at most! My world is pain!"

And Gabe replied, "Sometimes when you want to hurt someone very badly you have to tell them terrible lies."

Troll

I find it surprising to come from the NYT, but this is such a troll of an article. starting "if you want a new PC you're screwed because everyone knows Windows is shit" going on to say "Apple has a much superior operating system" and ending with "Apple only has a 3% market share because it doesn't want a bigger market share, if they wanted a 90% market share they could have it any time they wanted" And all this suported by the most selective of fact picking.

Article doesn't give all the facts

The article doesn't do Apple credit I think. Apple may not be doing well in the desktop world, but they are right there with the big boys when it comes to notebooks. Here [macworld.com] is an article that tells us that Apple's notebook market share was 17.6 percent in June 2007. But having said that, I also must say that I think Apple's policy to only sell their hardware in their own stores and in 'Apple certified retailers' is a way to make certain that they won't get a large marketshare on the desktop. Apple's policy ensures that people can not really compare Apples and other computers side by side, and people who own Apple computers will continue to be considered hip, or weird, or stupid, depending on who you ask. O, and one more thing! Here in the Netherlands Apple certified the Media Markt to sell their computers. In Enschede a few iMacs and notebooks are cramped on some shelves that are just behind the computer the employees always use to check availability and prices of the things they sell. That means there is no space for customers to have a good look at the beautiful iMacs et al. that are displayed there. I asked a Media Markt employee a few questions about the new iMac, and he turned out to know next to nothing about it. He even admitted that. If I were Apple I would make damn certain that the people who sell my hardware in 'certified' shops know their stuff, and put my precious hardware on display in an easy to reach place. My experience at the Media Markt made me decide not to buy the iMac there but online. I'd rather wait a few weeks than have to do with clueless salesmen.

Vista is a sh!t, but you will use it anyway.

IMHO Vista is a sh!t. But, IMHO, you are doomed to use it anyway.

Below is all my IMHO, folks. Be friendly, don't take me as troll. But you still doomed to see Vista, no matter how shitty Vista is. Because:

• Microsoft Office on MS Windows is still a winner for daily business. It is tragic, it is incompatible between its versions, it is unstylish, it is horribly looking. But winner. Why? Because people is using it for so long time and Excel there is fastest among competitors and has lots of features. And Excel is stupid fucking format, which all users in business companies usually stupidly fucking using it. Either you shall do something better or give up. Look at the newest Apple thingy: Numbers from iWork '08. It just does not works like Excel does. It is different thing. People, who already working -- they won't change in their mind. They want simply continue their work and go beer at the evening.
• Linux Desktop is just plain sucks and disappointing thing. :-( Yes, it works. Yes, it DOES works. Yes, it has that stunning XGL things (despite of it is completely useless CPU waste, yet I still love it). Yes, you can install Enlightenment and feel like inside Unreal Tournament. Yes, KMail is brilliant, Evolution is really nice, with OpenOffice.org you can do very complex usefull business ugly documents, yes you can listen the music, radio, watch the video and even eventually semi-sync your iPod (still no iTunes Store available). But all this is not a Desktop yet. The *integration of the software* is just plain sucks simply everywhere -- no matter Gnome or KDE or in between. Well, there are NO integration at all. You have dozen different pop-up dialogs for "Open file", you have extrenely stupid Nautilus with total absense of user-friendly (e.g: take pencil and paper and enumerate steps required to enable Trash Bin on desktop?) and so on... X11 desktop which is available today is that *wacky* and painfull.
• "Grey mass" syndrome of simply users. They think in chain way, like: John use Windows, Steve use Windows, therefore I have to use Windows.

You would say what is the proposal? Let's try to think. ;-) In my opinion:

• Desktop integration. Take a look at OSX and simply copy the principle. The first step would be making the fucking holy standard for developing the applications, no matter this is GTK or QT or whatever you want.
• Killer application. I have to admit that Firefox and OpenOffice are much better their predecessors (Mozilla and StarOffice). But we need something killing for DAILY boring office worker desktop usage. It should be fast, nifty, compatible and easy (to learn and to launch too).
• Do something with those glibc/libc incompatibilities between distros. I am sure vendor wants to release a software, the binary of which could work on any Ubuntu, any RHEL, any Fedora, any SuSE, any Gentoo and any other things you can imagine. Just take it, drop it to the installer thingy and zip-zop! -- it is installed, no matter distro you have. This perfectly works for OSX and works for Windows. Well, almost perfectly. ;-) I am not talking about apt-get or yum things (infrastructure). I am talking about compatibility of them.
• Stop ridicule and underestimate Microsoft but start respect them as a competitor and usually BETTER software writer. They generate brilliant ideas -- that's their strong side. But they implement them usually shitty and never think more practically about their ideas -- that's weakness we can exploit.

P.S. I am MacOSX, Solaris, Linux and BSD advanced power user and developer of software for more than 10 years. Don't tell me soap stories about "nice Linux Desktop", please. Just fucking please.

And they need too why?

If I'm Steve Jobs, why should I care whether Apple is "beating" Vista? Investors sure don't, if their stock price [yahoo.com] is any indication.

What matters to Apple is whether Apple is doing well as a company. They don't really have to care what's happening to MSFT. In fact, I'd expect that AAPL tends to go up at about when MSFT goes up because a large percentage of the stock price is based on the industry rather than the company.

huh?

shouldn't apple try to beat XP instead?

wishful thinking

The first question to ask is: could Apple even handle having a larger share of the market? They'd need to expand their range of hardware, they'd need to expand support staff, they'd need add a boatload of new APIs and functionality to their OS, and on and on. Outside of Apple, there would need to be a huge infrastructure of consultants, supports staff, technical authors, and other people supporting Apple hardware and software.

And that isn't even taking into account technical issues and missing functionality in their software platform. Having a nice looking desktop user interface and being able to talk a good talk on UNIX compatibility isn't the same as having a software platform that people can use in a corporate environment.

Overall, despite all the bluster, I don't think Apple is even aiming for Microsoft's market. Apple is happy to skim off the high margin, low volume market. Right now, they can afford to say "your wallet is too small", or "we don't do that" and send customers away. If they want to compete with Microsoft, they need to meet the needs of the vast majority of users--corporate, home, and engineering--and they need to do so on price, performance, functionality, features, and compatibility, and they don't. They aren't even trying or even making the investment (Apple's R&D investment is comparatively small).

Hoping that Apple can take over the market quickly because Microsoft stumbled with Vista is wishful thinking--taking market share away from Microsoft is a slow, steady process. Apple makes it particularly hard on themselves because they have created a bottleneck by being the single hardware vendor that runs their software, and by not giving an inch on compatibility with Windows.

The article is rife with errors

I am a former Apple employee who still maintains close ties to the company. I am also a former professional economist; I went to grad school for my Ph.D., but didn't finish my dissertation. I can state affirmatively without breaking any NDAs that The Fine Article is full of bullsh*t.

Let's start with his sales figures. "The Mac's *worldwide* market share was 3 percent as of June 2007, according to Roger L. Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, a consulting firm in Wayland, Mass." (Emphasis mine) Worldwide market share is a poor indicator of Apple's markets. It is mostly a US-focused company and will stay that way in the near future. In the US, Apple's market share is around 5-6%, according to the most recent figures I could find. More importantly, the growth rate is more than four times higher than the industry growth rate, 32% vs. 7.2% (IDC estimates via Apple's latest quarterly report). It doesn't take long for that kind of second order effect to dominate. Comparing the market share now (after the events of the 1990's) to Apple's market share when its mainstay was the Apple II is really bad analysis. I would expect better from the author, a professor of business who presumably knows basic microeconomics.

His figures for the share of computers in use are suspect as well. "Funny thing, though: based on the ratio of Windows and Macs actually in use, no gains can be seen for Apple. The Mac's share of personal computers has actually edged a bit lower since Vista's release in January, and the various flavors of Windows a bit higher, according to Net Applications, a firm in Aliso Viejo, Calif., that monitors the operating systems among visitors to 40,000 customer Web sites." Measuring OS usage share by measuring browser hits is a seriously flawed methodology. There are know sources of bias that lead to higher than actual market share figures for Internet Explorer on Windows, including sites that require users of other browsers to spoof the user agent header, measuring usage on sites that have ActiveX elements that drive away non-Windows users, and extra files being sent to Internet Explorer in order to work around problems in the IE rendering engine. Furthermore, the author is looking at the wrong figures and the drop that he's looking at is statistically insignificant anyway. The figures that he refers to are 4.68% (2007Q1) vs. 4.63% (2007Q2). Windows Vista was released to the general public on January 30, 2007. Thus, the base figure he should be using is 4.06% (2006Q4), which predates the release of Vista. A simple statistical test based on the Net Applications market share figures for 2004Q4 through 2007Q2 shows that a 0.05% difference is not statistically significant. Heck, any reasonably trained economist should be able to eyeball this and say that given that trend, a 0.05% difference is not statistically significant.

As far as the whole Best Buy thing goes, the author completely misses the point behind Apple opening its own retail stores. Apple tried for years to work with CompUSA, Sears, Best Buy, and other consumer electronics retailers to sell Apple computers to the masses. Each attempt was a dismal failure, as the personnel at the retailers could not sell something as complex as Apple's equipment. They were barely able to sell TVs. The only sort-of, kind-of successful experiment in there was the store-within-a-store at CompUSA, which was done by putting Apple employees into CompUSA stores. Even that didn't work too well, as the Apple section got lost in the middle of all of the other stuff. Apple is trying again to expand it's retail reach, but I would put the odds against it. Big box retailers' emphasis on low price and minimal service is completely at odds with how to sell Apple computers.

"Apple has not even begun to try to re-enter another domain from which it had withdrawn its Mac sales teams: large corporations." That would be news to Apple's entire Enterprise Sales team -- several hundred people. I work with them on a daily basis, even now. They've been there all alon

Re:The article is rife with errors

Facts are facts, regardless of who speaks them. I don't think the grandparent should be suspected of lying. The analyses certainly are in favor of Apple, but there are no great leaps to conclusions. Stop your ad hominem attacks please.

Apple NEEDS a mid-range head less system and......

Apple NEEDS a mid-range head less system and more hardware choice.

The mini is overpriced priced and the laptop hardware in it drives costs up and still has the real old gma 950 in it and all systems should have a super dr.

The imacs are not that much better while they do use a desktop HD, the laptop ram, cpu, slot loading DVD RW, and video push the price up. Also the smaller size of the new imacs mean that high-mid and high end video cards are out as well as more then one hd and you are stuck if it's build in screen.

The Macpro is over 1 and half years old and is still at the same price and same setup base system 7300 gt and only 1gb of ram and $300 to go to 2gb apples prices, OWC has it for $100. But still $100 a gig? Also the raid card for it is rip $1000 for a 4 port sata only raid card?

The mid-range system can replace the high end mini with on board video or a low end video card g33 / g35 chipset and pci-x 16 slot for video with x4 slot for other cards and desktop parts.

maybe have high end system for gameing with dual video cards x38 or NV chipset.

Or you can have a dual dual macpro with the low end xeon cpus and the new chip set with ecc ddr2 2/3 ram.

The mini can be dropped in price making it a very low end system.

well.. duh!

I find this an interesting article for the most part, but it's really kind of "preaching to the choir" isn't it?

The author talks about not taking advantage of this small window of opportunity to attack Vista. He also goes into great lengths about all the fabulous things Apple has already done to position itself as an alternative to Vista including the transition to intel processors, the fantastic ad campaigns, and the refinement of OS-X. Although he only says that "the official Mac line is that it has gone swimmingly" which seems imply falsehoods, he does manage to mention that sales are up over 30% across the board!

To me this sounds like unprecedented growth and execution, not a failure.
He then answers his own unproven assumption (that Apple isn't doing enough) by expressing "what could be done" as:

- ramping up their retail presence
- offering more for corporations.

But these two things are exactly what Apple *has* been doing for the last couple of years. In fact, Apple's focus has been so intent in these areas that it's on the verge of dropping the ball this year on a number of other issues as a result. How could Apple could ramp up the retail expansion any faster than they already have lately without stumbling? How could they focus any more on their high end and back-end server stuff for corporate environments with Leopard? Being certified as UNIX this year doesn't give them enough cred? Coming out with a fully exchange compliant server and simultaneously offering it's own end to end solution to compete with exchange server based on open formats and open source code is not enough? Coming out with a brand new corporate smart phone to challenge RiM is not enough?

Apple is already going through intense, rapid expansion on all fronts probably more than at any time in it's history and the very issues he mentions are already already major focii of their expansion plan.

I'm not saying it's a stupid article, but it's kind of pointless in that all it really does is restate some recent history, (MS took five years off and OS-X has come in from the cold), add some overly obvious business advice, (expand retail, expand markets, consolidate marginal markets), and then it just kind of wrings it's hands and worries about how far Apple can get before the "giant flywheel" of Vista gets it.

I'm worried about the flywheel too, but I fail to see what more Apple can do on any of these fronts that it isn't already doing. In particular, expanding retail locations any faster than it already is, would be a dangerous course for Apple and in the end probably bad business advice.

Mandatory comparison with Porsche

This has been said many times before, but obviously not often enough: Market share is only one way to play the game. Other goals are things like "profit" and "shareholder value."

There is a little German car maker you might have heard of named Prosche. They make sehr viel money. Their stock is doing sehr gut. They don't really care about market share. Now, nobody bothers them about this or writes little essays about how Porsche will never catch up with Toyota or GM, because everybody understands they are playing for profit, not market share. For some reason, many people don't understand this with Apple. They keep talking about market share.

Apple has no debt. They are making lots of money -- okay, so is Microsoft. Their stock is up, what, 70 per cent this year -- Microsoft's has been dead in the water for years. Apple has two different product lines that are doing fine: Computers and iPods. They are working on a third, the iPhone. Microsoft has two products of the same type, Windows and Office, that make money. Everything else they have touched, like the Zune and the Xbox, has been a financial disaster.

Let Microsoft keep its market share. Apple is making money and making its shareholders happy. Like Porsche.

the elephant in the room

The elephant in the room of course is:

You are not doing all you can to defeat Vista as long as you will not sell it in direct competition with Vista. That means, on OEM hardware.

Now, that may or may not be the right thing for Apple to do. But until they do that, they are not even trying to compete with Vista.

Why is this so hard to see?

Re:Neither can compete with the cost of Ubuntu!

And all of my Windows games run great on Ubuntu when I use WINE

Yes, this could well be true -- if the only Windows games you play are Minesweeper and World of Warcraft.

Re:Neither can compete with the cost of Ubuntu!

It takes more effort, sure. However you can run about any game under Linux now. You might need to have a special patched version of Wine for a certain game ( eg QuakeWars and Eve ), but often you just need to tune 'off-the-shelf' versions ( Oblivion and Morrowwind ).

It's not for everyone, but I like the flexibility and the cost. I don't have to buy Windows to play the game for example, or boot out of my main OS either. I should disclose I'm the guy that wrote a few patches and HOWTOs for Wine games. If you can follow simple instructions and have an Nvidia GPU that supports OpenGL 2.1+ you're set for the most part. I'm waiting for reports from AMD ( ATi ) users to see if the new drivers have any effect on the dismal performace and support of OpenGL and more specifically GLSL. The more choice for GPUs on Linux the better.

Re:Neither can compete with the cost of Ubuntu!

So see, with Ubuntu I get the Vista experience and the Mac OS X experience, all for basically $0!

If it really did give me the "Vista experience", I would be running FreeBSD instead.

Re:Neither can compete with the cost of Ubuntu!

And windows is like a dog that has been fed pet food from china since birth. (Vet trips, limited survival)