Dirk; Apple lovers are flying in ever decreasing circles(Mkt Share)and in due course they will enter their own nether orifice, from which safe retreat they will hurl scorn and invective upon Microsoft.
Apple stuff has been pioneering, and for certain areas such as graphics and music, dominant. However they thought that the broad market would pay like the niche markets(for whom there was no other choice), and their share just dribbled. On the Apple thread they seem like a bunch of ostriches, heads in the sand. They feel Jobs is a messiah, instead of the common promoter he is(with little tech or marketing savvy).
On the Apple websites calumny of this kind against Microsoft is commonplace. Their share erodes daily. They cut off clones, and they all look upon that as sage advice.
Apples only hope is an open cloned standard, like the standard that started with IBM and is now just a "gatescode" standard that anyone can make to, and IBM gets zippo. Intel is in big danger too, as any chip can be made to run gatescode, and so we are getting to the point where the "tel" on Wintel is going to be a superfluous rump, soon to go away and fade. Intel is huge, but vulnerable. If Intel's new "socket-scam" fails they will fall prey to AMD and other small mammals who like to eat dinosaur eggs(and lunches too)
Apple must gets bucks from the software and hardware aspects of the Apple platform in order to survive. IBM started it, but now gets nothing from software(MS gets that) or hardware(Intel gets that).
Apple is in a rearguard action, and if it does not act fast to get a broad Apple clone standard where it gets fees back, it will end up gone away. It will takes 3-5 years to fade. But to catch the Wintels they have to grow at 40% per year for five years just to catch the moving target the Wintels are. The Intel, "socket-scam" is a side issue of standards within the Wintel group, and AMD/CYRIX, etc may well win it, and the "Socket-scam" will go the way of the "micro-channel scam" (did you not know they were both scams, with little tech basis, just a proprietary attampt to get monopoly control of the market)
Bill |
