Apple might have selected a benchmark that show their box to advantage, yes. Criminally rig..no. Intel did that and got sued.
It is quite true that the G3 is better in many ways, as you say and if they had started even with a G1 better than 286 and....G3 better than Pentium and cheaper, we would be in an Apple universe. However the fools at Apple killed themselves with prices and no clones at the start. In a way so did IBM, who killed themselves with clones.
So now they have a better chip but 1/100th of the Wintel program base.
They are diminat in some areas like graphics, but only just and there are now more graphics programs sold to WIntels than Apples as all but one of the software houses in the graphics area have written dual version. I remember when you could not get pagemaker for the IBM, now pagemaker for IBM outsells the Apple one 5:1
The next question is will the CPU keep up?. will Motorola devote resources in APple will keep squandering the potential by over pricing the boxes as they have in the past. The failure of APple is also a big loss for Motoroal and IBM as they had wanted a CPU base to rival Intels and that nice + to the bottom line. Instead they got 3% of the Intels between them. That is why the talk of development freezes, it is costly.
My bashing of Apple was largely at the sins of the past, the current cost cutting and paring of the tree has made Apple profitable but it has not yet reversed the share slide, as it would take a 20% growth rate to even keep up with the Wintels, let alone gain on them.
As they say, it is a stern chase, Apple must catch up % by %, as the other are not slowing or stopping. This means that Apple must fund new software by outsiders in some way so they will spend time for a 3% box niche. I assume you understand economies of scale.
What changes has APple made to grow at 30-40% annually?
What have they done to get other to make their boxes under a rational royalty base?
Is it possible to build a box and buy the Apple OS to make a legal clone?, or is there too much firmware on the motherboard?
If some person wrote a new firmware as was done with all IBMs, would Apple then stop all retail OS sales?
Point made, Apple is a nice profitable niche and will slowly recede into smaller share unless they do something soon.
This flush of a boiling market can vanish in a market downturn and a bad quarter or two which will come soon enough.
Bill |
