""Ease of Use ". I disagree ! But if you say "Ease of Installation", I will agree ! Apple has been hammering on the "Ease of Use", where the reality is that once properly installed, Wintel is just as easy to use. A new buyer always sees a properly installed machine in the retail store, and when he hears the Mac slogan " Ease of Use ", he loses credibility in Apple."
I disagree with your disagreement! I have seen many computer users who were interested in getting work done: page layout, music and MIDI, movie production, art, etc. Many of these users I saw over the decade or so that Computerware was operating in Santa Cruz (Capitola, to be more precise). I stopped by the store every few weeks and bought several machines there. I never saw any Mac purchasers announcing that they had lost credibility in Apple. (Macs were and are extremely popular in Santa Cruz, for various reasons.)
"INSTALLATION ISSUES:
Apple had an ad campaign, where it spoofed the Wintel IRQ conflicts. Unfortunately this aired well after Win 95 had cleaned up the IRQ mess, and this was a non-issue. So the ad campaign eroded Apple's credibility to the average consumer."
As Dave notes, both Firewire (IEEE 1394)and USB (largely a derivative of Apple's ADB work, anyone who has looked at both will tell you) work right out of the box on Macs. This applies to DV camcorders hooked up to iMovie or Final Cut Pro, this applies to disk drives, this applies to nearly any app.
The reasons are not some special moral superiority of Apple people, but just control over disparate hardware. With the Wintel world, the advantages of multiple competing subsystems is offset by the proliferation of ways of doing things.
"However what most people are not aware of is that Windows NT was a nightmare for IRQ conflicts. Windows NT is non- plug and play; and worse, if you make an error, the NT protection mechanisms activate in unpredictable ways, and
mess up the system. The only way to recover is to completely uninstall NT, and reinstall, and try again. I have known extremely competent programers and hardware people to waste days trying to resolve trivial problems. Windows 3.1 was much easier to recover from. Luckily Windows 2000 is plug and play, and is a much better platform, and I believe that NT disasters will soon be history."
Thanks for the insights. "They should have bought a Mac."
But seriously, I hear good things about Windows 2000, and I hope (as an Intel shareholder) for even better things from XP this fall.
I don't claim Windows is unusable. I use it myself in emulation mode on my Macs. And I watch several friends of mine use it on their Wintel systems. I think Dave Budde and I are both trying to explain to our Inteldroid friends why Macs are not a stupid choice.
(An inflammatory view, though arguably a true one, is that the history of Microsoft for the past 15 years has been one of adopting Mac OS innovations.)
"I admit that Microsoft does not have the mindset for viewing the system from the point of view of a novice. It has the nerdic mindset that " What is obvious to me, is obvious to everyone else, unless they are retarded", or " Why should I bother designing this exotic hardware to be run by nitwits ?". Apple and AOL have done a much cleaner job. Microsoft has the persistence, listens, and eventually does mend its ways."
In fairness to Microsoft, I don't believe the "messes" with PC and Windows installations and later uses have to do with MS not having the "point of view of a novice." Rather, it's that Apple had the advantage (and the disadvantage) of designing the entire system (but not the third party apps, which obviously flourished on the Mac in its most successful period).
"....The net impact of the Windows flaws was that in the early 90's, Apple completely owned the destop publishing market, and most of the educational, school and university markets as well. Its products were definitely far superior. It completely blew that lead during the last several years. Today I do not see it as being able to leverage the minor advantage it has, and to improve its market position."
I don't claim, nor does Dave claim (from what I read) that Apple will ever become dominant again in the way it was (in many ways) at certain times.
However, a doubling of market share is quite possible, even probable.
I think this is enough to cause Apple stock to go up.
After all, we don't judge the future of Compaq's stock by whether Compaq becomes dominant, but by the usual bottom line profit issue.
When Apple's share was shrinking, there were reasons for worry about Apple's continued existence as a company. I think these worries have lessened, and Apple seems likely to do quite well. OS X is a major achievement, beyond XP from all that I have read. The new Mac stores are likely (from the two that have already opened) to generate new buzz.
But we could be wrong and you could be right. That's what makes it an interesting stock market.
--Tim May |
