Phillip; I see Jobs less as a visionary and more as a blunderer, who took far to long to see the writing on the wall at Next, and he should have never started Next in the first place. It was doomed from the getgo as the vision was flawed(as history proved) The proprietary scheme is dead, all who cling to it will die a slow death. There is no need for clone licensing, do I need a license to make a Wintel?, no I just buy a mother board, CPU and Win95. The only licence I see is the one I consent to when I open the package. Control of the CPU and OS price by Apple will keep the situation in hand with nothing but the shrink wrap license. You can write OEM agreements with Microsoft to install Win95 at the factory, and get it for less with an agreement, but there is no need for that at Apple. Just sell the CPUs and the assorted OSs and let market forces operate. To jump start it sell them as cheaply as you can to prime the pump. There is time for this strategy to operate for the christmas season if it is assumed right now(before September) However I think Jobs will miss this chance and strangle Apple with a return to a proprietary closed system(the good old days of the 80's, as this is a memory of his success, and he cannot move away from it and go forward). If he does go closed he will throw away any vestige of visionary stature, and just be a clay footed clod.
Proprietary the old way is dead, get an analog of proprietary with the clone sales strategy I suggest, and clone makers will have mother boards proruced in 4 weeks, and selling all over the world by mid October(only if no time is wasted can the christmas season be saved.)
Look at Gates, he sells the OS (win 95) for under $100(less for OEMs) and he has made an industry by a wide open buyable by all OS. Think of the OS as just another part, buy and install and run.I see him as a rational human who wants to spread his OS everywhere. If he had charged $1000, what would have happened?. OS2, SUN, CPM evolved, Next, etc, a fragmented market with less for the people and no real standards. Now we have the Wintel platform. It works and runs well, I do not mind buying OS from Gates, he is reasonable and rational, and will stay that way as it has given him big numbers.
I can almost see Jobs as a child with an orange juice stand, $1 million a glass, he chuckles, I only need one to sell. In the old days he made the Apple a cheap human computer, where did he go wrong and get proprietary and nearly kill Apple?, was it other managers who wanted all the sales and thet foolishly though every clone they kill is one more Apple sale? Not so , they forced all the cloners into the PC market with legal stuff, and TRIH.
Bill |
