Q

Friday May 13, 2005 - 11:30AM EDT

Somtimes I don't understand how Apple is not dominating the PC market. They have pretty much always had a superior OS to Windows. Yet their breif period of dominance in the early 80's was crushed by Microsoft and its licensesing strategy. Sure, maybe they couldn't control the quality of the hardware as much as they do now but I wonder what could have been if they allowed clones of their hardware since the begining. There was a short lived mac clone period in the last 10 years but they charged such outrageous OEM fees that it just wasn't profitale for those companies. Microsoft has Intel chips and Apple uses IBM/Motorola so in that area they are equal. Ever since Jobs came back to Apple the company had been revitalized. The IPOD is huge, but I wonder how much bigger it would have been if they decided to offer it for both Windows and MacOS at the same time. I guess it is just the way they have always done things. Now the Wintel monopoly is huge with companies like HP and Dell making those systems Mac can never catch up with all those computer manufacturers. I'd love for them to do an about face and finally allow other computer manufacturers to make and sell their computers. Maybe it is just not feasable anymore. But I think that would do more than anything to dent the Microsoft's monopoly. I think it could turn out to be a bigger blow than open source software. The microsoft monopoly starts with the desktop computer and extends from there. You attack that you bring down the beast. I guess Apple has no interest in attacking it. Frankly, Linux just can't compete with Windows on the desktop as far as usability and support goes. Mac OS on the other would be equal if not much better in those areas. Just think. What if Dell and HP started selling systems with Mac OS. I supposed Mac OS could be ported to i386 architecture. That may be another strategy, to go head to head with one of Microsoft's pillars (the other being the Microsoft Office). That one may be difficult though. Then again I don't know what it would involve to allow hardware clones and getting place like Dell and HP to make them. I want to see Apple take on that challenge. Maybe it is too late with Linux and open source for them to mount such a challenge. But their OS has never been better than it is now. There seems to be this elitest attitude among Apple and some of its users. That is what I think ultamitely kept and will continue to keep them out of market dominance on the scale of microsoft. I want to see them take on the challenge, they are the only legitamite challenger to Microsoft yet their focus is elsewhere. Meanwhile Microsoft continue to spread it dominance by moving into different arenas (XBOX). A note on XBOX 360. This next round of console wars will be interesting because the hardware for all three players is essentially the same (IBM/ATI chips, built in harddrives, wifi and online service). The current generation hardware differs considerably. I am not sure what the winning factor will be, but again this time it is anybody's game. Microsoft is trying the Windows link to be its draw. I don't know what the Sony and Nintendo strategy will be. Nintendo has repeatately said that it is going to introduce revolutionary new ideas to video games and high quality games. They are being tight-lipped though and I really want to see what they have up their sleeve because they could be back on top with this new system. Sony once again is going with brute force methods or software library size I think. E3 may be an eye opener.