Anti-cloners dig their own graves
Most Mac articles are like below:
Mac managers say licensing key to growth
Users at large Mac sites agree that licensing is important to Apple -- even if the companies they work for aren't buying Mac clones. While many users pledged their loyalty to Apple, several said licensing is critical to the Mac market because of the lower prices and hardware innovations offered by clone makers.
Karl Bortnick, program manager for internal services for the city of Philadelphia, said the licensing dispute does not affect his organization "because we don't have any clones.
[But] as a company, I think Apple has to have clones, because I think it makes Apple more competitive. I think competition is healthy." The city does not own clones because of its purchasing policies, Bortnick said.
Welton Gite, client technology analyst at Paramount Pictures Corp. in Hollywood, Calif., said stopping cloning wouldn't affect him at all. "I was looking at the clones, but no. I'd rather stick with what I've had for the past 12 years," Gite said. However, if clones go
away and Apple's prices rise, Gite said, "That would be a mistake. That's why people go to PCs -- Apple's high price."
Apple's initial reluctance to license the Mac OS is one reason that Raytheon Electronic Systems is moving its mostly Mac operation to Intel-based PCs, according to David Enos, program manager for Raytheon in Tewksbury, Mass. Enos said his company started moving to an all-PC environment six months ago and will finish the transition in another
six months. Macs will remain in niche areas such as publishing.
Overall, Enos said he thinks the clones helped the market: "They've driven some prices
down. If we lose clones, then Apple will die quickly."
Some defended Apple's attempts to preserve its revenue base. One user at a large
scientific company said vendors such as Motorola Computer Group and UMAX
Computer Corp. have expanded the Mac market, while he said Power Computing Corp.
has been "solely going in and trying to skim right off the top of Apple's market."
"If they play by the rules, clones are a good thing for the Macintosh market," said the
user, whose company owns mostly Apple-branded systems. "If they're strictly going to
come in and cannibalize, it's not. Until Apple can lower their percentage of revenue that is
generated by hardware, they have to be a systems company."
A Mac manager at a large nonprofit research company agreed that clones "have helped the
market but hurt Apple." The user, whose company owns some clones but mostly
Apple-labeled systems, said, "Cloners certainly have helped the Mac market, providing
greater performance with greater value. Competition is generally good for the market."
However, the user said, the issue should be resolved on a business and not on a religious
level. "It needs to make business sense for both parties. They ought to work it out." |
