I think people are used to emphasizing how important Microsoft is
regarding Apple's survival and prosperosity. However, I cretainly
believe that Apple should focus on its PowerPC supply problems from
rebuilding good relationship with IBM and Motorola. The reason is
very simple - 90% of revenues were generated from hardware sales.
Last quarter, OS8 sales were exceedingly well, but it only created
less than 91 million dollars. Jobs is software-oriented person, who
can rally the troop only onthis aspect, while a major portion of
hardware deal is still out of control, where I think Gil probably
has more powers since he is an expert on chips and has long term
good relationship in this community.
Well, I agree with you and Steven regarding Apple's TV commercial,
where ordinary people don't care about Einstein, Gandhi, or Picasso.
Only a very small group of people, such as Apple's executives probably
dreamt about becoming the historical great persons, since their yearly
income will be good enough to support them for day dreaming for entire
life. Apple products have to be cheap enough to compete with WinTel,
on this point, I believe Bill Jackson is absolutely right.
Going back to Rhapsody, if Apple only tries to create another Unix
platform for enterprise market, then it will fail since there are so
many excellent platforms already on the market. They have to push
Rhapsody into consumer market asap to take the advantage of Apple's
current stand in such market.
I urge Jobs or future CEO strongly rebuild excellent relationship
with IBM/Motorola to smooth the chips supplies in the future quarters.
I think this is not a forecasting problem, instead, it is a
relationship issue. After all, Apple is a hardware company, not any
single OS8 or Rhapsody can improve its financial conditions.
Phil |
