RE: Microsoft Wake Up–Apple is gaining Intellectual Capital and Market
Jim Forbes wrote an interesting piece Microsoft Wake Up–Apple is gaining Intellectual Capital and Market over on his blog.
I have to disagree with most of it though. I don’t see Apple gaining momentum outside of a few new media folks, who’ve always held an exaggerated sense of their own importance.
From the home point of view: Apple has big problems on the gaming front. I can’t get the latest and greatest games running on OSX. That’s a deal breaker for me right there. Running the latest and greatest 3D games through a virtual machine just isn’t an option.
From a business point of view: Microsoft have got it nailed down tight. We run Windows XP with Office 2003 all shared using Windows 2003 Small Business Server. Contrary to what you may have heard, that all works great. One of the very clever things Microsoft has done is tie everything together so it works seamlessly (most of the time). Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t remove Windows XP from the mix, I would lose too much functionality.
From a developer point of view: Microsoft owns the market! So, why develop for anything else. Apple bundling software is great for their customers but it doesn’t send a great message to their ISVs. Microsoft’s support for developers has always been great, and I don’t see that changing. The biggest threat I can see is Eclipse, a wonderful suite of developer tools all for free. We use it heavily to create Java based websites. But again, we get just as much out of it by running Eclipse on Windows XP as we would running it on OSX.
I do agree with you about competition, Microsoft needs to be kept on its toes. Having Apple, Linux & Eclipse around is great for that.
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Jack, thanks for the link to my post on the new Imacs and on increased competition by Apple against Microsoft. I don’t dispute Microsoft’s dominance, but I do think OSX is a fine alternative and now that Apple has gone Intel Mac users are no longer penalized by having to buy more expensive processor specific applications. ONe of th points I was trying to make is that the native software bundle on iMac is I blieve one of its major under appreciated points. Moreover, the initial productivity for Mac users is, I’d be wiling to bet, higher than any other platform.
Quote | Posted August 8, 2007, 10:12 pmI do feel Apple has a ways to go in th portable space as well. It’s in this class where Apple’s arrogance may hinder product adoption. I slamed Apple for not having a built-in modem on MacBook Pro and was promptly labeled a cave dwelling troglodyte by the Mac faithful and also accused of having been raised by wolves.
Again, thanks for the link and thoughtful comment.
Best,
Jim Forbes
Escondido, CA
Thanks for dropping by Jim. I agree, Apple moving over to Intel based systems was a master-stroke. In one go they removed a big impediment to going with Apple, Microsoft Windows lock out
Quote | Posted August 9, 2007, 8:40 amyou ain’t seen anything so far. wait till Sepetember cool stuff on the way.
Jim Forbes
Quote | Posted August 10, 2007, 1:34 am[...] was thinking about Jim Forbes post, and my reply to it. The more I think about it, the more the Windows vs OSX battle really is getting kinda [...]
Quote | Posted August 15, 2007, 9:03 am