A Tale of Three Tech Industry Warriors
Linked by David Adams on Mon 4th Apr 2011 02:19 UTC
Editorial Rob Enderle wrote an intriguing editorial for Digital Trends entitled "You can't call 'time out' in Silicon Valley," which examines the current battle between Apple, Google and Microsoft over the future of computing. In it, he draws some interesting parallels from the history of warfare, and notes that Microsoft and Google have made some of the classic blunders that have caused great armies to fail dramatically.
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No it isnt
Member since:
2005-11-14

Oh, did he? Enderle is making things up, as always.

Apple survived to become the juggernaut is is now, not by retrencing to work on its next big thing, but by focusing on making the best of the lineup it had, and using that momentum to make better products. To use a military slogan that was all too overused during the time of Apple's renaissance, "you have to fight with the army you have."
In actual fact, it's absolute hogwash. Apple survived by dumping everything they had: first MacOS Classic, then the PPC. Along with that (and somewhat earlier), they entered a new era of industrial design, with more colourful products like the iMac and the original iBook, which surely has been a big part of their recipe for success. But imagine selling a MacBook to run OS 9.x today? Or an updated Powerbook in the same price range, with CPU power comparable to entry level Intel laptops? Not even the RDF and a dozen new primary colours could help Apple with that.

Reply Parent Score: 4

bloodline Member since:
2008-07-28

Oh, did he? Enderle is making things up, as always. "Apple survived to become the juggernaut is is now, not by retrencing to work on its next big thing, but by focusing on making the best of the lineup it had, and using that momentum to make better products. To use a military slogan that was all too overused during the time of Apple's renaissance, "you have to fight with the army you have."
In actual fact, it's absolute hogwash. Apple survived by dumping everything they had: first MacOS Classic, then the PPC. Along with that (and somewhat earlier), they entered a new era of industrial design, with more colourful products like the iMac and the original iBook, which surely has been a big part of their recipe for success. But imagine selling a MacBook to run OS 9.x today? Or an updated Powerbook in the same price range, with CPU power comparable to entry level Intel laptops? Not even the RDF and a dozen new primary colours could help Apple with that. "

Yeah, that's true... Although, as I understand it, the original OS 8 based iMac was in development before the return of Jobs... So he did "Fight with the army he had", at least to a large degree in the early days of his return.

Reply Parent Score: 1

David Member since:
1997-10-01

You're definitely correct that Apple dumped everything they had, and for good reason: MacOS was getting real creaky, and PPC was losing ground fast. But the point I was trying to draw attention to was that Apple didn't curl up in the fetal position until OSX was ready. In fact, they pushed forward very strong with their lineup of candy-colored PPC machines running OS9, and worked overtime to make the transition from OS9 to OSX as smooth as possible, then later from PPC to x86.

Now, you can say that it's dishonest to keep pretending that your crap OS and crap hardware are great while you're laying the groundwork to release something better over the next few years, but considering how smoothly the transitions went, due in large part to a lot of attention to detail and hacking skillz on the part of Apple's engineering team, I think they rewarded their userbase adequately.

Reply Parent Score: 2