It's official, folks:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/te...rtner=homepage
Good move? Bad move? I'd say Apple may get some instant satisfaction share-price wise, but long-term they are losing the very reason people buy Macs in the first place. In ten years they may just become another Dell or HP.

I don't understand why anyone would buy a Mac to run Windows. Personally I find OS X to be very good, and everything works well with the Mac hardware. Most apps have Mac versions, such as MS Office, Adobe ...

I think there may be a risk that Apple will discontinue the excellent OS X, supporting only Windows. Would this be the point where Linux starts getting more market share?

--Ian

Lots of reasons: Windows-only games, Windows-only Microsoft software, even Windows-only Internet Explorer... MANY people are going to want to have the advantage of running OS X AND Windows on the same box, even if it is just for bragging rights. If Apple plays their cards right, they could get an explosion in Mac buyers due to this. Add a good commercial campaign, drop prices, and KEEP OS X and this Windows compatibility, and it becomes very realistic.
By the way, the Mac versions of those pieces of Windows software are known for being quite buggy (especially MS Office).

That seems like a very random thought here. Why would Linux get more share in that scenario? If anything, they would LOSE market share.

There are many people who use Mac OS X because they want a Unix based system. If OS X was no longer Unix, then maybe Linux would gain greater use among those people (Like some computer engineers and computer scientists that I know).

Once people use OS X, they generally love it . I think if people could dual boot Windows and OS X, people would tend to use OS X mostly. I would just have a problem if Apple discontinued OS X in favour of Windows.

--Ian

The thing i find weird about this is that it makes buying a Mac pointless. Essentially people would be paying for hardware eye candy. This is going to hurt their identity as a company, and in my opinion hurt the company in the long run.

I disagree. Once Mac moved to Intel hardware, it was completely and totally inevitable that somebody was going to figure out how to dual boot OSX and Windows. Apple is just getting ahead of this game (actaully they are playing catch up as people had already figured it out). It also removes a serious obstacle to buying a Mac, namely that most people have at least one program that they really need that only runs on Windows. By doing this, those that like OSX can spend most of their time there and then boot into Windows when they need that program or two.

And when you think about it, people have been paying Apple a pretty stiff premium for eye candy for a long, long time. Wintel machines have almost always been significantly cheaper than Macs, yet Mac has developed a loyal following willing to pay that price. I don't see this as changing that fact at all.

I agree with that assessment: Mac is positioning itself as a machine that can do everything the other guys do, and more, and better. As the owner of not one but several of these machines (among other types), I can attest to the fact that they do.

Apple is also thumbing its nose at the fact that Microsoft is (a) stuck on the x86 platform, and (b) years behind delivering an operating-system release that promises to be (imho) utterly irrelevant if|when it finally ships. Basically, they are publicly "beating them at their own game."

And they're very-visibly offering the existing PC community a credible alternative to what they've got... an alternative that is a household name now. The consumer has a very short memory and no alliegance at all: he simply wants the best that he can get. Microsoft was un-challenged for far too long, and I'm afraid that now that serious competition has arrived, it has arrived on the wings of thunder and there's gonna be a serious smack-down here.

One of the things that have made Macs so awesome over the years is the OS X developers know exaclty what hardware their target audience is running and so everything is just so damn integrated. You walk into a wireless network with a Powerbook and the effect is amazing, you open the lid and magically everything is configured. No only are you connected but depending on permissions etc any network printers are configured also, it's smooth.

Once Apple get some of that magic working on a "special Mactel Windows driver CD" then look out. Windows compatibility with the ease of use of a Mac, game over they win where's that trophey I had here...

sometimes when i'm thinking about these mac issue ... something is telling me its time to make sure that those classic macos 9 cds are still in good condition ...


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I disagree with Apple being only eye-candy. They have confindence in their OS and use technologies first (mouse, WiFi, USB, Firewire, etc). It's time that Windows start being a "legacy compatibility layer". Boot Camp and Virtualization just emphasize this. What's good for Windows (in this case) is good for every x86 OS... I think it should be more easy to install GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris, Plan 9, etc on an Apple computer now.

Having virtually only Unix-like operating systems with some form of FOSS (...Darwin has a BSD-like license afterall) IMO will make the computing world more interesting and productive.

in a sense ... that still prevalent abstract layer of windows "legacy compatibility" should be gotton rid of from the *nix world and the world of open sourced / free softwares ... probably not for the coporate world which i somehow try to and could understand but for the rest of us , there arent any needs for windows at all ... ok ... probably i sound more like a castronist impatience or something but it (may) works ... at least "privately" at home or your immediate surrounding enviroments ... i mean ... as long as it is not windows and it accompanying *matter of fact* prevalent dominating "mass culture" which is pretty much peculiar only to the windows world ...



//now go unshelved my oberon which i had shelved quite some time ago ...


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>> "... as long as it is not windows and it accompanying *matter of fact* prevalent dominating "mass culture" which is pretty much peculiar only to the windows world ..."

it should be ... "... as long as it is not windows and it accompanying *matter of fact* prevalent dominating "mass culture" which dictates how people lead their life bounded by their peculiar thoughts , mindset and attitudes towards their surrounding enviroments which anyway ... pretty much also populated by people and aspirations of their very own kind no matter how they try to deny it ... and all of these are peculiar *only* to the windows world ... i mean ... at the mean time ...



//so ... go linux go !!


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