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Apple Businesses

Dismal Apple Forecasts Are Wrong 107

Posted by pudge from the nyah-nyah dept.
Nutrimentia writes "Tom Yager has a new column at Infoworld disputing poor analytic forecasts of Apple's future, especially based on criticism of Apple's lack of innovation (which seems to me to be pretty easy to refute, but whatever). It's a balanced article that looks at what Apple is doing right and wrong, and he offers some good reasons to pay attention to Apple even if you aren't a Mac fan, namely that the company's approaches to the market help understand many broader trends in effect."
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Dismal Apple Forecasts Are Wrong More

Dismal Apple Forecasts Are Wrong

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  • First it was Petreley on Linux marketshare, then it is Yager on why to take Apple seriously. Infoworld should let CmdrTaco or Hemos do a guest column, assuming they've got enough editorial power to overcome all those typos. :)
  • It's not as bad as Ross Perot thinking that there's no money in investing in Microsoft.

  • He's got it right about developer documentation... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chief Typist ( 110285 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @11:40AM (#5529082) Homepage
    He's right on target about developer training & documentation. It sucks big-time: poorly categorized and there is lots of missing information.

    When I'm looking for an answer to a technical problem, I typically find answers at sites like Mamasam [mamasam.com] or CocoaDev [cocoadev.com]. The Cocoa Dev Central [cocoadevcentral.com] site is a good source of sample code, too. Many more resources are listed here [mamasam.com]

    Historically, Mac developer's have been very picky about this: Inside Macintosh is wonderful. It's an excellent technical reference presented in a consistent and easily readible format.

    • Re:He's got it right about developer documentation (Score:5, Informative)

      by WatertonMan ( 550706 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:33PM (#5531437)
      Apple's many mailing lists are excellent resources. The product developers are often members and can answer most questions. The quality of feedback on the X11 mailing list was, for instance, quite amazing. Same with the Project Builder.

      Check them out:

      http://search.lists.apple.com/ [apple.com]

      Apple's ADC pages have quite a bit of source code as well I've found invaluable. No its not as nice as the initial volumes of Inside Mac were. However given the work Apple is doing on its development tools, there is too much of a moving target to have a tool like that. Apple's worked with O'Reilly to produce quality introductory materials. They also recognize that, unlike the 80's, most of us use the internet to get "how-to's." So it really is a different environment.

      http://developer.apple.com/macosx/ [apple.com]

  • Just ignore them and they go away... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by heldlikesound ( 132717 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @11:54AM (#5529162) Homepage
    As an admitted Apple zealot, I used to get so pissed off about finacial analysts getting thier collective panties in a bunch about Apple going out of business within a year or so... Now I just don't care what they say. Apple is a good company, they respond quickly to market trends, and often are the ones setting trends, but they are not too quick to create a stupid PDA that nobody wants (anymore). They have about $4 billion on paper, the good kind of paper, CASH. For a company as relatively small as Apple is, they innovate and create or help to create more standards they just about anyone out there.

    One last thought, just to show I'm not a completely blind follower of Lord Jobs. Had Apple not gotten OSX so gosh darn right, I would have bailed, OS9 was showing it's age and starting to get real flakey under stress. I'd either be running a user-friendly (although OSX has taught me a good deal of under the hood UNIX stuff) or, shudder to think, Win2K. However, I believe they did get OSX right, in my opinion, besides the first Macintosh, it's the greatest thing Apple has ever done.

    Apple needs some fast processors from IBM and the education market back.

    They will be fine.

    • Re:Just ignore them and they go away... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, Windows2K is quite nice. Comparing it to 98,me, or 95 is like comparing OSX to MacOS 9 (or 8). In the last year, I've rebooted my work computer maybe 5 times (4 for security updates, once due to the power dying). MY home pc I hibernate, but don't ever 'blue screen'

    • Re:Just ignore them and they go away... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by selderrr ( 523988 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @01:41PM (#5529956) Journal
      Apple needs the education market back.

      This is gonna be a very painful episode : my kids are in elementary school, and whenever computers have to be purchased, budget is usually limited at 100$ per machine. There's never a new PC purchased, as por that price they can get 5 second hand machines. Macs, being expensive even in second hand, completely falls out of the boat here.

      Educational spending on computers is at a historical low in Belgium, and I figure most other contries too since the dot.com.bubble.burst.

      No way there's an iMac in a classroom of a small school. Not even an eMac. And as we all now : elementary schools pave the path to highschools. What kids liearn at age 10, is what they want at age 15.
      • No way there's an iMac in a classroom of a small school.

        Schools do not buy Macs at list price. Apple has extraordinarily aggressive incentive programs for schools that want to buy Macs; 80% off the retail price of the machines is not that unusual.

        Details may vary overseas.
        • Details may vary overseas.

          You bet they do !

          20% to 30% is the max discount we get here. Dell gives far higher volume discounts for our university : I don't know the financial details, but *every machine* bought by univ money is a Dell. Project budgets can be spent anywhere offcourse, but univ techies will fix only Dells. Even if it's a dumb floppy drive install.

          The sad part is that Apple is even losing in the univ hospital : "Ghasthuisberg" is the biggest hospital in belgium (it's huge for belgian no
      • Educational spending on computers is at a historical low in Belgium, and I figure most other contries too since the dot.com.bubble.burst. No way there's an iMac in a classroom of a small school. Not even an eMac. And as we all now : elementary schools pave the path to highschools. What kids liearn at age 10, is what they want at age 15.
        They're many iMacs in the classrooms of small schools, even in Belgium. In the Southern part of the country, iMacs are everywhere and still today Apple is looking for way

    • Re:Just ignore them and they go away... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A friend of mine was recently in CompUSA. (I try to avoid the place because I generally find nothing but a headache when I go into that store - especially if I need knowledgeable help.)
      Anyway, apparently he was talking to the store manager who said Apple's have been selling really really well the past month. He actually said something about businesses have been buying apples from them "2-to-1 over Windows PCs". That may just mean that most businesses don't buy their computers from CompUSA, but it still soun

  • Blindness as Vision (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thefinite ( 563510 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @12:07PM (#5529240)
    I guess I was out of touch with the analysts of late, because I didn't know they thought things were so bad. Still, it's a good thing I wasn't paying rapt attention to them, or I would've sold my PowerBook and bought it back about 5 times in the past two years.

    What I don't get it why they haven't figured it out yet that Apple is strong and steady, unlike its counterparts. The blips on the rader are just that, blips. I find it quite ironic that the people who are supposed to have this figured out are the ones who understand it the least.

  • Apple's Historical Hits and Misses (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Spencerian ( 465343 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @12:23PM (#5529401) Homepage Journal
    Apple is still a computer company to watch, although it may be of lesser interest to stockholders today. Still, if you were to bet on any one personal computer company to make something that would transform a process, Apple is a safe bet.

    Apple is where it is now for several great ideas and collossal screw-ups, many of which determined the company's present destiny.

    (My history highlights come from Apple History [apple-history.com] to make my point easier, and for your reference.)

    1977: The Apple II is born, beginning the personal computer boom in earnest. Apple develops, by some estimates, a 75% market share.

    1984: Apple develops a successor to the Apple II line, the Macintosh. It used a graphical interface and mouse and was the first computer with a GUI to become commercially successful. Apple boneheads the initial fate of the Mac's success by: (1) failing to make Apple II apps work with the computer, (2) making the system underpowered until 1986, (3) making the computer with a 9-inch screen that was hard on the eyes, and (4) making the Mac very expensive ($2495).

    1986: Apple updates the Macintosh with the Mac Plus, with more RAM, external SCSI support, and a true hierarchial file system update for the OS. A software company, Aldus, creates PageMaker, which takes steam as the first desktop publishing program. Apple soon offers the LaserWriter, one of the first laser printers. A good move by Apple that still gives them the lead in DTP and prepress work today.

    1985: Bill Gates sends a memo to then-Apple CEO John Sculley (having been hired by Steve Jobs and then, shortly, has Jobs ousted from Apple). Gates recommends that Apple license the Macintosh [imouse.ca] (warning: PDF) to make it a standard computer operating system. Gates recognized that Macs were great but weren't reaching critical mass. When Apple refused, Gates requested a license to duplicate the look and feel of some of the Mac OS in a product he was considering with IBM. Biggest bonehead move of all for Apple as this would've made the landscape completely different from the OS world we know today.

    1988: Apple finally offers a Mac with internal hardware expandability, including a larger screen: the Macintosh II. It was too late for those who chose a more expandable IBM PC. This moves breathes life into its products, and vendor support improves.

    1990-1998: Apple creates more good, innovative ideas, such as the PowerBook laptop (whose design elements are commonplace on PC laptops today) and the Newton (the first PDA), but never capitalizes on them as they want to hold on to all rights. This"not-invented-here" policy nearly kills the company as expensive, confusing models aren't clear, and developers find Windows apps more lucrative. Apple's overall market share plummets. Windows 95's debut makes this worse. Apple considers and offers Mac OS licensing, but this only makes Apple's problems worse as 3rd party clones are better products than Apple's.

    Apple completely loses its marketing model. Steve Jobs ousts CEO Gil Amelio to return to as company CEO and begins to repair Apple's products and credibility.

    In my opinion, Apple's best move would've been in licensing themselves. It may have killed Apple ultimately, but the Macintosh technologies would have survived and improved dramatically as the PC clones have proved out over time.

    Is Apple still a force to be reckoned with? Even if you don't know an Apple from a PC, the company history suggests that, if there is a new spin on a computer program or hardware product, Apple usually thinks of it first. Unlike the Apple of the past, however, don't expect Apple to abandon its creations at the first sign of trouble.
    • In my opinion, Apple's best move would've been in licensing themselves. It may have killed Apple ultimately...

      Then how would it have been the best move? Best for whom?
      • Exactly.

        I suspect the implied answer was "for us consumers", but I seriously doubt that would be the case. Initially, users would have benefitted from the Mac's much greater user-friendliness and technical strengths; but after that...

        Apple has always been a very different company from Microsoft, and I doubt that they would have taken quite the same money-driven, just-good-enough approach. But without anyone to compete with, would Apple have continued to innovate at the same rate? Would it have been pers

      • My opinion is that the Mac OS technology was by and far the superior compared to DOS and early Windows. Apple's licensing may have killed the company if they would not get every penny of credit for every Mac OS computer sold. Also, since Apple is a hardware company, they would be hard pressed as would other Apple-licensees from standing out in the crowd.

        Two good examples: Today's PC companies struggle to make stand out almost identical systems. Also, when Apple finally licensed the Mac OS and their compute
        • I don't see Apple as a life form. It can die tomorrow and I would not mourn. It's a godless, soulless entity as are all businesses. I just like the tech involved.

          Have you ever heard the story of the goose that laid the golden egg? Here's a hint: Apple's the goose.

          If Apple were to have ceased to exist as a company in, say, 1988, all the great things that they've created since then never would have existed.

          If you like the golden eggs, then you'd better not roast the goose. It would make you a fine dinner, but it wouldn't be the wisest move in the long run.
    • In my opinion, Apple's best move would've been in licensing themselves. It may have killed Apple ultimately, but the Macintosh technologies would have survived and improved dramatically as the PC clones have proved out over time.


      doesn't sound like their best move to me if it ended up in the death of the company!

    • You forgot so many things, like the Apple III debacle, exploding PowerBook Batteries getting recalled...and then the recalls getting recalled.

      Just to name a few things. I'm not going to do the litany,

    • Re:Apple's Historical Hits and Misses (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Apple 1990-1993 Apple owns the education market.
      Apple is the number one computer manufacturer by volume.
      The Quadra has SCSI, 32bit SVGA, and up to 128M of memory.
      Macintosh is the only platform for Macromedia Director, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Mosaic Browser, and Quark Xpress during this time.
      Desktop and Digital Video comes of age on the Mac with Quicktime

      Meanwhile: MS-PCs have Windows 2 through 3.1. Corel Draw, Ventura Publisher, 8 bit vga, and 8M memory limit. DOS is the most popular MS-PC operat

    • Re:Apple's Historical Hits and Misses (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Alex Thorpe ( 575736 ) <alphax@@@mac...com> on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:14PM (#5531276) Homepage
      I agree with most of your history, save that the clone makers made better products. They had lower prices and faster processors, which admittedly seems to mean better to many PC users, but were cheaply made, relying on Apple to do all the R&D. They nearly drove Apple out of business, yet couldn't survive without Apple.

      Even today, Apple couldn't survive another round of licenced clones, as any licencee would have a much lower overhead than Apple, be able to make much cheaper units, and probably still wouldn't attract too many Windows users.

  • Here's why Apple has a bright future: (Score:5, Informative)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @12:53PM (#5529627) Homepage
    Just take a look at this article [imaging-resource.com] at www.imaging-resource.com.

    This isn't a Mac bigot. This is a guy that completed a slide show project, after much struggle, using DVDit on a Wintel box. "Some helpful souls suggested we'd enjoy life more if we used iDVD on the Mac. So we did."

    He started working at 4:50 p.m. Every darn thing he tried just plain worked the way he expected. "At 6:10 we were ready to burn. ...And we'd spent the whole time -- not just a large part of it -- arranging the show contents rather than fighting the program interface.... We were done at 6:26." He said "...the only [really] aggravating part of the whole process [was] getting the blessed cellophane wrapping off the blank DVD. We can't wait to get these in spindles."

    Apple's situation has been the same as it always been. Microsoft, like IBM before it, has the hearts and minds of the corporate IT departments and wins all the top-down purchasing decisions.

    But everyone who actually has to use the things finds that Apple's hardware and software, overall, are just plain easier, nicer, faster, and more productive to use than Wintel gear.

    As long as the people who actually use computers have any say whatever in what computers they use, Apple has a bright future.
    • Its really fun to read the Windows [imaging-resource.com] version as well.
      • So what... the program he used didn't support AVI, he converted to MPEG1, and DVDIt is a piece of garbage.

        He should have used Sonic Foundry's Vegas+DVD. It's a complete end-to-end editing, encoding, and production package that's fully integrated. And it's not much more than Primere alone.

        Or he should have used one of the MANY good DVD packages for Windows.

        Don't blame the platform for crappy apps.

        • Apps are a large part of a "platform" (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Onan ( 25162 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:30PM (#5531417)
          If you'd said "don't blame the OS for crappy apps," or "don't blame the hardware for crappy apps," I might agree with you. But you specifically brought up the term "platform," which implies that we're talking about the whole package that's actually available to the user. Application quality is extremely relevant to that discussion.

          The software you recommend appears to have a list price of $999.99. Compared to iDVD's price of free, that's a substantial downside. For that additional thousand bucks, you could buy a copy of Final Cut Pro, and once again leapfrog the functionality of the Windows software.
        • The comparison at hand is between iDVD, which comes with an Apple-branded DVD burner, and DVDit LE, which is the software that came with the other computer or DVD burner or whatever. In other words, it's a completely valid comparison.

          If you want to compare non-bundled DVD authoring packages for Windows with non-bundled DVD authoring packages for the Mac, then we have to pull out DVD Studio Pro... and believe me, you don't want that. The comparison would not be flattering.
          • If the burner came with crap software, that's the fault of the company producing the burner. Remember, Microsoft does not sell PCs (XBox aside), Apple does. This was not a Windows/Mac comparison, it was an Apple/Whoever Made the DVD burner comparison.

            I suggusted Vegas+DVD to show that Windows is not the problem here. Dell could probably ship a copy of Vegas+DVD on every system they sold with a DVD burner - Sonic Foundry is almost out of business and I'm sure they would be willing to license their package t
            • This was not a Windows/Mac comparison, it was an Apple/Whoever Made the DVD burner comparison.

              No, it was a burn-a-DVD-on-a-PC/burn-a-DVD-on-a-Mac comparison.

              But complaining about a stupid DVD package is not a comparison betweeen Mac and Windows. It is a comparison between what Apple shipped with their machine and what shipped with the DVD burner.

              The fact that Mac users don't have to worry about what kind of software shipped with their DVD burners, and whether that software is good or not, is a major s
              • According to the reviews I've read, Vegas 4 is as good or better than Final Cut Pro.

                Now, Vegas+DVD - I just got to using it yesterday. It did the job and was pretty flexible - almost 100% of the feature film DVDs that I have seen could have been produced using it.

                "The fact that Mac users don't have to worry about what kind of software shipped with their DVD burners, and whether that software is good or not, is a major selling point for the Macintosh. This comparison bears that out."

                A user would usually b
    • Actually, I find apple hardware and software to be a whole lot slower than comparable Intel/AMD stuff. Yes, I have used the same applications on both platforms. There are some nice things about Apple machines, but they are not universally better!
  • Do Apple really have an exclusive deal with Sony Ericsson on syncable mobile phones? I thought it was just the competition (read: Nokia) that just had sub-standard SyncML implementations.

    Oh well, I still love my T68i.

  • apple's are awesome.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @02:04PM (#5530189) Journal
    No joke, just yesterday my roommate told me of how his ibook saved the say. Here goes...

    He was at his church trying to use thier windows pc to print the church budget for a meeting. Windows kept giving him the error message that 'either the printer is off or the port is disconnected.' Well it wasn't. It was hooked up and it is usb. My roommate after several tried gave up and hooked the usb cord for the printer up to his ibook. The ibook recgonized the printer, and he was able to print. He was so happy as there was no software installation nothing. Just plug in USB and print.

    Now before the mac haters or basher start I wil lsay this. Mac is missing a few things, like drivers for certain hardware. However the hardware that it does have drivers for works easily in my experience. Apple has done a wonderful job with their OS X and if windows was 1/2 as good we would not need as many desktop 'PC = personal computer' (which includes macs) admins. Yes some people would be out of jobs. I now do 0 admin on his machine whereas windows I was was doing lots of debugging because this or that did not work. I love mac's cause that have literally made MY life easeier. Your experience may vary, but I love the macs,a nd as soon as I can afford a powerbook, I'm getting one....

    • It's not that the drivers are lacking, it's that some hardware companies are making parts for PC's and adding "support" to MacOS on the off-hand without Apple collaboration. It costs a bit more to work with Apple, and that's why. But companies that work with Apple have an advantage over other manufacturers who are giving Mac Compatability as an afterthought...Apple helps you build it into the hardware.

      It was one of the best things about the old Macs and I think it's still present in many other Mac stuff
  • This is rediculous. apple is the first companie to mainstream unix in a way that a secratary can use it. they are using the G4 processor. by the way if you look at the bech marks and the the way the processors are built. are superior to amd and intel. and you look at the engineering. mac products are guaranteed to work with mac products. the same people who think that pcs are superior to macs also believe that coors light will make you sexy and cool. intel and amd are called junk processors for a reason.
    for

  • FYI, Apple producing Office Killer (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Toe, The ( 545098 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @02:45PM (#5530512)
    Apple's biggest problem these days is that their most important software is made by their biggest competitor. In a business environment, a Mac is liekly to use MS Explorer, MS Entourage, MS Word, MS Excel, and MS PowerPoint.

    Now, enter iWorks [thinksecret.com], Apple's forthcoming answer to that bug-laden piece of poorly programmed crap that should still be in Alpha, called MS Office.

    Apple is taking on MS on every front. In the enterprise, they're producing powerful, cheap, easy to deploy servers. And now they're producing the clients for those servers.

    The day of the desktop PC for personal use is over, and Apple is the only company to see it. Desktops still have uses in the Enterprise, and Apple is poised to take over there as well.

    • I find Entourage to be indispensable. I know there are worthy alternative products but this app works for me and never crashes. Word is another story. Don't know why.
      • Try supporting Entourage in a corporate environment. Like every other MS product, it is coded like crap.

        Granted, Entourage is much better than most MS products, but it is still a source of many problems in my office. It just isn't coded well. One person might never notice all it's horrible problems, but put 50 not-so-savvy people to work on it, and it's a friggin nightmare. Like it is with all the other MS products we use.

        I'm looking forward to having a 100% Microsoft-free office by the end of 2003.
    • This is very exciting news. I am hoping that Document and Spreadsheet are Cocoa apps not Carbon code from AppleWorks. I also hope that they will adopt an XML file format for Document and Spreadsheet in keeping with Keynote's use of XML.

      I also believe that Apple needs to make Windows versions of Safari and Document. Many websites are still IE on PC only. Having 2 million Safari on the Mac users out there isn't going to sway a lot of companies that they need to develop their sites to work with all browse

  • PC World needs apple (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Enrique1218 ( 603187 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @03:38PM (#5530989) Journal
    The personal would be slow to innovate if it weren't for Apple. Apple is the only computer that is willing to think outside of the box. Other have mentioned it before GUI interface, USB, Firewire, Good Design, etc. Does anyone think Dell and the likes would really fork tons money into R&D when they too busy cost-each other? Not really but they will borrow ideas from Apple once they have been proven to sell (wide-screen Insprions, thin and light centrinos with large battery life, gigabit ethernet in ThinkPads, DVD-R everywhere etc.) To tell the truth, I don't think anyone wants to see Apple go because then would have to start innovating for themselves.

  • Let's ask the bigger questions. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:44PM (#5531515)
    Like, for example: How is it that Apple, while constantly 're-inventing' itself, manages to always occupy the same niche of perception?

    Why does the general public think that 5% marketshare is a shameful thing in the computer world?

    Why are people threatened to the point of flameage over the simple existence of Mac hardware?

    Why does Apple provoke such intense reactions?

    They must be one of the most scrutenized companies in the world. And, as everyone knows, the joke is so old its got whiskers: "Sure Apple is going out of business. They'll still be going out of business long after you and I retire."

    Is it because MS is the only other mainstream OS provider? I wonder if things would be different, in an alternate universe, where we're buying Atari and Amiga and BeOS boxen.

  • Apple makes really sexy designs: they make devices that are attractive, both physically and in software.

    But don't confuse design with innovation. Apple's hardware is mostly put together from off-the-shelf components. Sure, they choose nice components, but so do high-end PC vendors. Their software technology is mostly NeXSTStep, which is itself a combination of a Objective-C, open source Mach, and Adobe's graphics engine, none of which were developed either at NeXT or at Apple.

    Apple used to try to inn

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