Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 12th Jan 2007 19:03 UTC
A few days ago, Adam explained on his blog why it would make sense for Apple to port Safari to Windows: "Maybe it's making a leap of faith, and yes, the browser market is one where making a noticeable entrance will be challenging, but the less of a jump into the deep end buying a Mac is, the easier it is to make your Apple brand accessble, available, and not scary. The best way to start? Safari on Windows." Yesterday, Mary Jo Foley dug up from deep within Mozilla's Wiki the following prediction by the Mozilla Foundation: "Apple may have Safari on Windows with likely ties to iTunes and .Mac." This line has now been changed into a more general statement ("WebKit may be ported to Windows" - which already happened) but point remains: does it make sense for Apple to port Safari to Windows?
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Member since:
2005-10-12
...if Apple starts porting all its "cool" apps to Windows, what is the incentive for people to switch to the Mac?
This is indeed how they think in Cupertino. They are always looking for some 'must buy' item. When they have found it, the idea is they will then bundle it with a bunch of other stuff you don't want, and make you buy that too, as a condition of getting it.
As a business strategy its a brilliant way of limiting market share and allowing deficiencies in any one product line to infect all. From an ethical point of view it leads inevitably to lockins and DRM/Trusted Computing restrictions, to stop people doing what they want to do with your products.
From an intellectual point of view its bankrupt. Think about it in its clearest form: the argument that we need to lock OSX to Apple hardware, so as to sell Apple hardware. The argument, unpacked, is that the no-one, or very few people, would buy our hardware on its merits. Well, if that is true, right there is your problem, and it needs fixing. Bundling and restricting your customers choice is not fixing it.
Its bankrupt in another way. You are imposing costs on your customers which you'd do better to levy directly in the price. That way you'd get cash for the extra costs incurred by customers directly on your bottom line, and you'd have some way of knowing what exactly your must have item is worth.
The answer is probably divisionalize, and let each of the divisions reach their potential by selling unbundled. This is what happened with Filemaker, and its a great success. But as long as Jobs is there the business model will be frozen in about 1987, so we'll hear the 'incentive' argument over and over again from Apple fans.