Apple's Dilemma II (2006)

While I am a Mac fan, I have little patience for overheated rhetoric about Apple vs Microsoft as some kind of sacred struggle between Vision and Compromise. I mean, really.

Apple, at this point, has little choice but to emphasize design and the effective integration enabled by their proprietary platforms because it's all they have left. What else are you going to sell the Mac on? Price/performance? The software library? Please.

I think the Mac advocates' strongest points are these:

1) The open architecture of the PC is a mixed blessing. Yes, you can customize and modify PCs in every possible way, but this also opens the doors for every kind of functional and compatibility problem. We PCers take a perverse pride in our tinkering abilities, but most of us have to admit that we are "technical" by necessity, not desire, because the PC platform is a house of cards compared to the Mac - although things are a lot better now that under Win3.1/95/98.

2) The PC architecture serves a "lowest common denominator" interest far more than the Mac's. "Backward compatibility at all costs" is almost a design rule with PCs - and woe to those who truly try to innovate or improve. Not even IBM could get away with it, when they tried to "bump up" the PC to the next level with the PS/2 architecture, control of the industry was ripped from their hands by the Cloners; a committee of companies led by Compaq dedicated to s - l - o - w progress, if any, in how computers are used.

(Look at how long ancient DOS-code persisted in Windows 95 and 98, at the cost of terrible instability and insecurity in those OSes. Think that was an accident? Lazy programmers? Nope. Legacy software and hardware required it.)

We can't be too harsh, though. Companies that spend literally thousands or tens of thousands on hardware and software do not want vendors telling them every 18 months or so, "Ok, everyone out of the pool. We're changing everything." Ironically, Apple's small market share actually frees them to take chances that no other OEM would dare. Look at the way Apple TWICE successfully migrated their entire business across hardware (68k -> PowerPC) and OS (MacOS -> OSX) lines. I have a hard time seeing a PC cloner doing that - assuming they'd have the nerve to even try.

3) Gear-savvy PC folks who come into discussions like this - including me - with their scratch-built, ultra-cheap PCs and hands-on knowhow, are not typical of computer users. Computer users are getting less 'techie' with every passing year. People can debate the desirability of this, but it's a fact. The fact that you can "roll your own" PC means very little to most PC users. For them, the quality of goods and ease of use presented by the Mac are highly compelling.

Side note: What kills the deal, as I said before, is the PRICE. Even if they can't do the homebrew thing, they know people who can. I have built a dozen PCs for friends and coworkers in the past few years and easily half of them were considering a Mac. They just can't look past the price. You can lecture them all you want about interface elegance and iTunes and whatnot, but they see giving me $1000 to build them a good PC vs spending $1300 for the cheapest iMac or $2500 for the cheapest PowerMac.

4) The "software gap" has everything to do with market share and nothing to do with the technical merits of the PC architecture. Half-Life would have run just fine on the Mac, but wasn't released for business reasons. Similarly, cutting-edge hardware folks (like those 3d accelerator makers) roll their stuff out on the PC first simply because there are more of them, and they'll sell more cards.

5) Microsoft's power has got to be reduced. I don't begrudge them the credit they are due. They've done very good work and - for the most part - earned their success. (Thanks, Steve.)

But Microsoft has reached a point in their corporate growth where innovation of any kind takes a distant second place to smashing all potential competition - not by making and selling better stuff in a "May the best man win" way, but through anti-competitive (and illegal) measures. This was the conclusion of the Court after an exhaustive investigation (and was common knowledge in the computer and software industry before the trial).

There is also the little fact that they were found guilty in court of breaking the law to maintain their monopoly - during which case the company was caught presenting faked 'evidence' regarding certain aspects of Windows and IE.

Of course, the actual punishment was a joke. Proof again that if you're big and rich enough, it can pretty much ignore the law.

Microsoft's current goal - which the management of the company makes no secret of - is to remove control of the desktop operating system from the end user.

This will be accomplished in two ways:

First, the gradual shift from a 'retail purchase' to a 'subscription' model. You won't just buy Windows once for your PC, you'll rent it and pay and pay and pay...

This allows Microsoft to keep the Windows "cash cow" going. They knew all along that high volume OEM and retail OS sales and upgrades wouldn't last forever, that at some point most homes and offices wouldn't be buying new computers as often as they were in the late 80s - early 90s. The subscription model is their way of making you buy Windows all over again at regular intervals, whether you need to or not.

Second, changes in the Windows OS architecture and functionality will make it increasingly difficult (if not impossible) to run Windows off-line as a stand-alone product. Your PC will become less a PERSONAL computer and more of a USER TERMINAL dependent on centralized data services.

This is the real motivation behind their enthusiasm for a wired world and increased deployment of broadband Internet access, as well the new Windows activation scheme.

All this would be less worrisome if Microsoft wasn't the only show in town, but it is. Even J. P. Morgan and Standard Oil never enjoyed the level of market control that Redmond now holds.

Microsoft is not evil. It's simply a company trying to protect and maximize its revenue sources. I understand that. But there are some fights it must not be allowed to win. Apple is key to this. But for Apple to make a real difference, it needs to move beyond producing boutique computers for the Pottery Barn set and take a real bite out of Windows' market.