Dvorak has an intriguing question : Might Apple Adopt Windows?
Hmmm. On first glance it sounds crazy. But he makes a couple of good points : that business sense trumps sentimentality (even at Apple though?), that Apple see themselves as a hardware company, that with the switch to Intel architecture Apple are losing a lot of the control they used to have anyway.
Apple basically provide nice hardware and a nice presentation layer. By putting their presentation layer on top of a Windows OS infrastructure, they'd sell a lot of nice, expensive hardware into corporate settings which need to run standard Windows software.
A couple of thoughts. Firstly, Apple already admitted that they weren't in the OS infrastructure game when they switched to a Unix core.
Presumably if Apple did go this route, they'd be building on some version of post-Longhorn windows which would presumably have a fairly modular architecture?
What would then happen to Apple's Unix core? What about Darwin? Or let's put this another way. How much of MacOs's develoment is actually being done in the BSD, Darwin etc. communities? What's the value for Apple in switching from an free software core to a proprietory one built by MS? What's the value to Apple if their fanatical community decide to create a free MacOS clone based on Darwin?
As commenters point out, there are some very important, Mac-only niche applications (in the creative industries etc.) Unless Apple can move them over to a Windows core, early, then this is Apple effectively ditching its existing userbase in favour of a different one.
Isn't Jobs now going to be running Disney? How does a "non-creative" Apple fit with that?
Cringely thought that the Apple / Intel deal was about Intel taking control of the PC market. Apple getting into bed with Microsoft doesn't help there at all.
Dvorak is right, that what Apple wants is Windows software able to run transparently on the Apple platform. Dvorak thinks that porting the Mac higher level presentation layers to a future Windows is more likely to get them there than Windows emulation tech.
After writing this, I suspect that's off the mark.
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3 comments:
That's the dumbest thing I've heard in a long while.
business sense trumps sentimentality
Business sense is giving up control of the OS??
Apple see themselves as a hardware company
Uhmm...iLife? iTunes? Music store? Pro apps? OSX? Apple is hardly a hardware company. Apple is a company that integrates hardware and software expertise to deliver superior customer experiences.
with the switch to Intel architecture Apple are losing a lot of the control they used to have anyway.
Huh? By switching CPUs? How do you figure?
Bad analysis of a silly premise.
"Bad analysis of a silly premise."
His or mine? :-)
Look, I agree it's implausible. But I think you're discounting the points.
Business sense is giving up control of the OS??
Sure, sometimes it's a good idea to concentrate on one competence at the expense of another. Apple have already admitted that they're not trying to differentiate themselves on the kernel of their OS or other basic infrastructural services. That's why they use the free (open source), commodity BSD at the heart of OSX.
Uhmm...iLife? iTunes? Music store? Pro apps? OSX? Apple is hardly a hardware company. Apple is a company that integrates hardware and software expertise to deliver superior customer experiences.
Granted "hardware company" is a bit of a misnomer. Although Apple's biggest success now seems to be a piece of hardware : the iPod.
Yep, they're an integrated experience company. iPod is a piece of hardware with a good interface. iTunes is a service. Etc. But that's just the point. They are NOT trying to differentiate themselves on writing the "best" piece of software. Or even being a great software company. It doesn't really matter to them if some components of the overall experience are not under their control.
Huh? By switching CPUs? How do you figure?
By switching CPUs you don't just change the CPU, you accept a whole lot of decisions about the architecture of the motherboard, data-busses, standards for other components like memory chips etc. etc.
Apple had a lot of say in the PowerPC architecture. It will have less in the Intel / AMD world where Dell and HP etc are also big players. This is clearly another area which Apple have decided isn't core for them and so they can accept a commodity solution.
Well, it's not a priori crazy. But the more I think about it, the less likely I think it is.
I can't see enough incentive for Apple here.
Once they're on an Intel architecture, I suspect it will be pretty easy for the machines themselves to be dual-boot into Windows and MacOS. There are probably enough potential customers who'd be satisfied by that for there to be a comfortable growth in sales of machines to corporates. Apple could even resell Windows with the machines.
So this is a low-cost move (now they've switched to Intel) for some growth.
But actually changing the OS has many costs and risks :
- the software development itself
- the fact that it will really piss-off the Mac developer community. (I know, traditionally Apple aren't scared of this, but it's a cost nevertheless)
- I think that there's a real danger that a pissed off Mac development community might throw themselves into seriously producing a free clone of the entire MacOS stack. They already have Darwin as a starting point. They know how those higher level APIs work. (Now, one left-field thought is that Apple might be OK about this. Getting out of OS development and hoping to just sell the hardware. But if that's the plan, they could do it more easily by simply open-sourcing the rest of MacOS.)
- Total dependency on Microsoft. They may be willing to outsource important subcomponents of their system to someone else ... but to a single supplier, with known monopolistic tendencies?
For all this, what would Apple get, exactly? The chance to compete against commodity PC manufacturers as a platform for Microsoft OfficeLive and legacy client-server applications in large corporations.
OK, so after their success selling iPods against commodity Asian mp3 layers they may feel they can win this, but there are lots of reasons they wouldn't :
- Corporates are more price conscious and less fashion / design driven than individual consumers.
- As Pat says, above, Apple like to control the whole experience. They have little control over a commodity PC running MS software. Nothing to add to justify the higher price tag. The entire burden of Apple's brand would be on whatever extra-pretiness they could bring to the presentation layer. I'm not sure that would be enough.
Apple would be far better off with good Windows emulation (or actually running a copy of Windows inside MacOS) than basing MacOS itself on Windows.
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