“On the eve of Apple Computer’s semi-annual MacWorld event, Microsoft has dropped a bombshell on the company: Work harder to accelerate Mac OS X sales, or Microsoft will exit the Mac market forever. This sentiment is one shared by many Mac developers, as Mac OS X has not sold well at all.” Read the report at WinInfo and MacMinute’s report of the original Wall Street Journal article.
Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I am sure that there will be a long row of people complaining about this. But let’s check in with the facts, Microsoft needs to continue to make money. They make a lot of money on producing and selling office for Windows. If they make a loss (or only a very very small profit) on Office for MacOS X they will pull it off the market, and put the developers on office instead so that they can push the next version. Which of course will be harder since Office XP includes quite a lot.
Apple needs to lower prices, and boost 3rd party MacOS X software sales if they are ever going to survive. They need way more money than they have to survive the launching of Longhorn in a few years.
But then again, if you are an unemployed bunch of MacOS lovers that reads this, start making an office suite for MacOS X, there are a lot of money to make!
Wah, they only sold 300K copies of Office OS X. Some companies don’t rev their OS/Office Suite every other year to gen sales. It’s time that Microsoft faced up to the reality that Mac users don’t feel compled to upgrade every other year and start trying to make money on longer duration life cycles. Maybe if they could do that and succeed they’d be prepared when the PC industry slows down.
This would be a blessing in disguise. beginRant(); Finally, the Wintel crowd would be able to curb their antics about how MS is the ONLY reason why Apple even exists. Apple knows what they are doing when they *specifically* target Windows users. They know that their contract with MS won’t be renewed. So MS comes up with this crap story about not enough marketing from Apple, tell me, honestly, have you not seen those ‘switch’ ads a thousand times now? In a many a tech mag and riddling the TV? This is just some lame reason for MS to back out.
MS claims that sales of Office are not as desired on the Mac, well hell, shock to me, the average Joe and Mary doesn’t have $499 to spend on software? Office users on Windows only pay for upgrades as most received them as an OEM installation. Really, Apple can stand without MS, IE is already being replaced by Mozilla/Opera and their version of WMP never works right. I’m sure I’ll be flamed as a Machead zealot for even speaking up but I don’t care… endRant();
Dear All,
I don’t think that there will be a serious uptake of OSX until the designers’ holy trinity of Illustrator, Photoshop and Quark are released for OSX. It’s a very impressive peice of software, but to paraphrase Bill Clinton ‘It’s the apps, stupid’
Cheers,
–m–
I see this as being a killer to apple. Office is probably the most important app for an Apple user. I don’t know that there is any other real office suite for OSX (maybe if there was a Gobe Port). Trying to sell a windows user a mac and having no way for them try access their office files would be a death blow. It would also make the commercial with every file opening without a problem a complete lie, (though those commercials are so full of it anyways, so probably wouldn’t matter). Even if you could open them the problem of “it’s just like MS office but it’s not MS office there for I’m not going to use it” would come into play. This of course has to be something Apple thought about before releasing their current ad campaign. One might wonder if they have something up their sleaves, iOffice ? If not maybe this could be an opertunity for the likes of Gobe.
This is less an announcment and more a threat from MS. Apple: sell more OS X and Office.X or we are going home. I wonder what the behind the scenes discussions were going on that lead to this threat. Perhaps it was brought on by the switch campaign, or the end of the MS-Apple agreement, or both?
Expect Apple to offer a special Jaguar + Office.X bundle to lure buyers. Perhaps $29.99 jaguar upgrade price, free with office.X upgrade.
Skipp
This kills me. Mac users will pay for overpriced Mac systems but won’t/can’t shell out the money for Office. Go figure. Buy a 933Mhz Mac for the price of a 2 Ghz PC with more ram, larger hard drive and better video card but can’t/won’t shell out the cash for Office for OS X.
That’s like buying an SGI to do serious graphics work and complaining that Amazon paint is too expensive.
Satori.
now is the time to strike! if they finally will go over to the much cheaper x86 arch and clean up ms on their own turf … maybe a real x86 os battle could ensue .. it would be fascinating to watch …
Is Microsoft encouraging the development/release of OSX on Intel? Apple is going after the Microsoft customer mildly by the “switch” campaign, but an attack at the PC operating system itself to generate OSX sales may be a real answer. Microsoft needs to pick it’s battles a little more wisely, or is it a tactic to encourage an OSX on Intel release thinking it would be a flop.
First of all, Mac users do (or will) have another choice: OpenOffice. There Mac version is coming along very nicely. Secondly, What a load of shit from M$. moshek was right, Apple pissed off M$ with their ads, and now they are picking up there toys and going home. What a bunch of spoiled brats!
snip: ” This kills me. Mac users will pay for overpriced Mac systems but won’t/can’t shell out the money for Office.”
FYI: Mac users are willing to pay a higher price for what they feel is *worth* it. Think about this for a moment: Most Mac user I know uses it for one of two reasons: Graphics (Photoshop, DTP, etc) or Music(Cubase, ProTools, Logic), and more recently: *nix Development (Did you know that Apple gives away their Developer Kits?). Most people (at least that I have come across) don’t really need Office as a whole (most students *do* need MS Word [or another WP]). In short, as Apple knows, Apple has a comfotable niche in the creative arenas NOT the business arena. This all should really come as no surprize to anyone.
–moshek–
In a few years MS office will be replaced by open office, star office, gobe office etc. MS’ terms suck too much. And who cares about MS. How is it that everyone that claims office is the most important product for mac also claims that Macs are only used by art freak/graphics/creative people.
If MAc’s were only used by that group then the most important products would be logic audio, adobe illustrator, etc.
This MS’s way of trying to steal apple’s thunder. Since they can’t do it with innovation or excitement (bill gates does not exactly exude excitement) then they have to do it by threatening apple. Apple will live with or without MS. In fact, it won’t be that tough to come up with a better product then MS office.
As for lagging sales of OS x software applications. What do you expect the user base is still OS 9. The MS user base is probably still mainly ’98. Major changes like that take time.
it’s not just about MS Office. MacOS X and apps in general aren’t doing so well
…oh! but wait a minute, I don’t care much for kissing Jobs’ *ss either :o(
Oh! well…shame Be, Inc. went tits-up.
Wah, they only sold 300K copies of Office OS X. Some companies don’t rev their OS/Office Suite every other year to gen sales. It’s time that Microsoft faced up to the reality that Mac users don’t feel compled to upgrade every other year
Apparently, they are facing up to reality and deciding they can live without Mac if things don’t turn around there.
and start trying to make money on longer duration life cycles.
Why not continue to make money the way they are? The question is, what will the market bear? It seems, quite a lot.
Maybe if they could do that and succeed they’d be prepared when the PC industry slows down.
They continue to be very profitable. Love ’em or hate ’em, if you had to bet on a software company to survive a downturn, I hope you would pick MicroSoft.
Apple already has its own office suite, called AppleWorks. It comes bundled with every Macintosh, or is available retail for $79. AppleWorks was recently upgraded to open and save files in Microsoft Office formats — a move which many Mac aficionados saw as an opening salvo against Microsoft.
“Apple is going after the Microsoft customer mildly by the “switch” campaign, but an attack at the PC operating system itself to generate OSX sales may be a real answer.”
That will never happen (unfortunately). Apple is apparently more interested in selling hardware. And with OS X on Intel Apple would lose alot of hardware sales. I would love to run OS X on my PC. I just doubt that Apple will risk releasing it. Frankly, I think Apple would do well to:
a) Release OS X for x86.
b) Create their own upscale PC’s to match their nice Macs.
I could be wrong. But it could work.
Satori.
<DRUEL>
How much would I love Darwin + OSX GUI on my p4…..
</DRUEL>
As an independent consultant working with both Macs and PCs, I have to be honest and say I have not recommended that anyone switch to MacOSX yet. I really think that Apple burned itself by making X’s computing requirements so hefty and not truly backwards compatible (face I–Classic mode sucks.) I have had many people inquire about upgrading, but since most of these people had older G3 based systems (iMacs, B&W G3s, Powerbooks…) that otherwise run fine, why upgrade? It is easy for us to pontificate on the need for the latest and greatest, but what does this really get the end user with modest requirements? Microsoft does a much better job of getting high adoption rates on its upgrades mainly because PC users buy new computers more frequently. And these computers seamlessly run their old applications. X requires that you (generally) have purchase new versions of whatever software you use to get the performance and features of X. On the other hand, I have clients running ancient 16-bit Windows applications on brand new Dell boxes with XP without a hitch. The only difference they see is they run faster. I believe that X is superior to all that came before it, but because of the choices that Apple made it will be a long road to wide spread use.
Chris
Satori wrote: “Mac users will pay for overpriced Mac systems but won’t/can’t shell out the money for Office.”
Maybe because the average Mac user doesn’t want Office? Doesn’t need Office that badly?
I certainly did not buy my iMac in order to run Office.
— Lars
Yes, OSX looks nice -Especially to us geeks.
But we’re also the group wise enough to say “Hey… The economy’s in the toilet and my salary’s not really cutting it at the moment -Perhaps I shouldn’t be buying an overpriced, underpowered Apple machine to replace my not quite as cute, but certainly feasible x86 system?”
Do I want OSX? Hell yes!
Would I like an Apple G4 to add to my growing collection of PC’s? Hell yes!
Will I spend the money on such a thing, only to then have to purchase OSX equivelants of all my software? Not very likely!!
————–
Apple apparently doesn’t want to support the x86 platform, but by doing so they automatically alienate a huge chunk of their potential market.
This is apparently out of concern that people will no longer buy their overpriced hardware, if an economical alternative is available.
But now even their own users are dragging their feet when it comes to such upgrades (perhaps due to the fact that OSX crawls on a G3, which is the very platform most of their foot-draggers are on). A dillemna for ol’ Steve I’d say!! 8)=
Similarly, I see Apple having created another dillemna for themselves: Since they’ve now based their OS off BSD, this now means that many free/open-source Linux and Unix apps are now available for OSX as well (or, in some cases, are easily ported over to OSX).
So what exactly is the incentive for Joe PCUser to pay an outrageous amount to Apple, only to now pay equally high prices for proprietary OSX software?
If they have old Mac software (<=OS9), they can continue to run this under OSX, albeit without the benefits of the new UI, or they can now simply download and/or re-compile apps which will meet their needs.
For instance: Why buy MS Office for $300+ if you can get OpenOffice for free? Or use you most recent version of Office from their old Mac (does anyone really use any of these new bells and whistles MS keeps adding to office every year anyway??) if it meets your needs.
The point is that Apple’s dug itself into a hole, and are now scrabbling to keep dirt from being thrown on them.
And it all seems due to Steve Jobs stubborness over supporting a non-Apply hardware platform.
Sigh…
Meanwhile, the longer Apple screws around trying to ignore the obvious, Windows continues to get better and more stable. There may not be those same compelling reasons to even try an Apple if they don’t make their move soon.
Man… I really want to own a OSX box, but I’ll be damned if I’ll pay the prices they want right now. You can now buy a 2Ghz Pentium 4 box for about $650, whereas a dual 1Ghz box (the closest they really have to a 2Ghz machine) runs almost $3000.00 used (scan ebay if you don’t believe me)!! It’s ridiculous… F*ckin’ ridiculous.
And unless Eugenia deletes my comment as she did the last time I mentioned an honest experience with it, GoBe Productive is not a good solution for an Office replacement: Their customer service bites, and their products not (yet) strong enough to compete head-to-head with MS Office. Maybe in a year or two with new management they might be, but not this year or next!
Save your money and go for Star Office or Open office, if you want to try a decent MS alternative.
I can’t disagree with you on that one, Arielb, I guess I get a bit defensive because it really sickens me that the I have to defend myself whenever I come across a Windows user that thinks Apples are sh*t. I’m a programmer by trade, I code in Visual C++ and (and gcc on Linux) all day long, I know quite a bit about Windows. I really think BOTH OS’s (Windows and OS X) are nice OS’s, both have features that I think the other should have.
Mac users are constantly being attacked as being snobby and foolish for even using a Mac. OS X does seems to be slow to adapt. I personally didn’t want to switch because I would have lost a lot of Apps that I really use frequently. Hell, I still have to use Cubase and ProTools on OS9 b/c they are not available yet. Unfortunately switching from OS9 to X is more than just an OS upgrade, it is also all the Apps upgrade , which can be quite expensive.
perhaps I’m a bit testy b/c it’s Monday morning…
Honestly, SOME people from “both sides” tend to “attack” each other. I was personally “attacked” once when I was looking through some Mac stuff at a computer store. Some Mac user walked up to me and asked me something like, “Do you use a Mac?” And I said, “My primary computer runs Windows.” (Never getting to say that I do have some Macs though) And next thing I know, he’s spouting off that, “It’s a good thing that you are checking out the enemy… Especially since we’re going to kick your ass!!!!” Or some such thing. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I thought it was quite funny though.
However, I’ve always gotten the feeling that Mac users tend to be more anti-Windows, than Windows users are anti-Mac. Why? Because most Windows people I know, simply do not care about Macs one way or another. It never comes up. Yet, a number of Mac magazines I see spend time bashing Windows/PC users. But that’s just the feeling I always get.
As far as MS Office for the Mac goes… Personally, I think MS charges too much money for that stuff, but maybe that’s just me. So I rarely use MS Office under any OS. So, it won’t bother me in the least.
As far as OS X goes. I have a copy of it, but it won’t run on my best Mac without a minor hardware upgrade and I also don’t have any software to run on it, so I haven’t installed it yet.
“Maybe because the average Mac user doesn’t want Office? Doesn’t need Office that badly?
I certainly did not buy my iMac in order to run Office.”
Well, if you don’t need/want it, don’t get it. I wasn’t suggesting every Mac user go out and buy Office for OS X. I was only suggesting that I find it funny that someone who could use or needs an office suite and uses a Mac will greatly overpay for their Mac (we’re talking hardware now, not OS preference) but balk at paying a premium to purchase Mac software. If shear bang for the buck is ones biggest concern perhaps one shouldn’t choose to buy a Mac in the first place.
Satori.
All you people whining about making MacOS X available on PCs can forget it because Apple makes too much money from the hardware portion of their sales. (Don’t forget that Microsoft owning the PC platform is one of the reasons why NeXT was available for purchase in the first place)
Even if Apple were to port all of MacOS X to the x86, it would probably be setup to require a non-standard setup so that you would still have to buy hardware from Apple.
OSX isnt really being sold to old mac users right? And Macs have been losing marketshare right? And not alot of software is really out there to make current mac users NEED osx. And office for os9 works fine for current mac users so they dont wanna shell out another half a grand just to use office X. Mac users are mostly home users, or science depts. Office is a monopoly on workers who need to modify documents both at home and at work. Home users need a word processor for homework, or little things. They arent going to spend 500 bucks to use word. Home users on PCs use works.
It’s unrealistic to expect MS to sell office for macos when macs are barely used in the work enviroments. This can change thanks to MS’ new liscensing contracts, but for now OSX still does not sell applications from other companies. Apple knows this and is bundling alot of good apps for free to get more users on OSX.
I hate conspiracy theory BS, and I don’t really buy into this. But with how much Apple’s been pushing it’s new Switch compaign and that this would be annoucned durring MacWorld, doesn’t that seem like it could be interpeted as a bit of a scare tactic/threat, and just that? To detur users from Mac? I personally haven’t bought MS Office because my iMac came with AppleWorks, why bother shelling out a few hundred bucks for something that doesn’t do much more at all?
You don’t seriously believe that AppleWorks is in the same league as Office do you? Even Apple doesn’t believe that. There is a reason AppleWorks is cheap and it’s not because Apple are just a bunch of real great guys who thought they would sell AppleWorks for a song because they love their customers so much.
Satori.
Apple will never work on writing drivers for all the pc hardware out there. Besides it will make all their arguments (http://www.apple.com/powermac/processor.html also rules out IBM CPUs because they don’t have “Velocity Engine”) look foolish and Steve Jobs will never admit to being a fool
Office isn’t in the same league as Office — that is, Office is not as all that as a productivity suite as Microsoft would like you to think. Office has not conquered the market because of its quality, but because of its ubiquity. AppleWorks already meets 95% of the average user’s requirements, and if Microsoft really did discontinue Office for Macintosh, you can bet that Apple would rapidly upgrade AppleWorks to meet the remaining 5%. I really don’t think Microsoft is actually going to discontinue Office, though. They’re just throwing a snit.
If Apple could guarantee to ISV’s that Microsoft would never create software for their platform, it would be a blessing, not a curse. ISV’s would like to have an environment that was protected from the ruthless Microsoft monopoly.
Of course, Apple is fucking this up by being the Microsoft themselves and selling key software at low prices to make sure no one ever wants to come in and sell any signficant software for Mac.
Microsoft is seeing the writing on the wall —
1) Apple is focusing on multimedia, low-end and high-end.
2) Apple is moving upmarket.
3) Apple is de-emphasizing business use of their PC’s.
4) Artists and musicians don’t use Microsoft Office.
Without lots of Microsoft Office buyers, there is no point to the Mac market for Microsoft. All those talented Mac developers could be put to work doing something much more interesting:
Creating the Microsoft PC and the next generation of Microsoft applications.
#m
There have been a few types of “interesting” responses here. I think a few words about each are called for.
“Maybe it’s not selling because it’s so darn expensive.”
Well, fine, but this is irrelevant to the article. No one is claiming that Microsoft is sitting around saying, “Oh gee, how can we entice more of these darn Mac users to buy it?” They’re saying, “Here’s our product and here’s the price we want for it. If not enough people buy it, we’ll distinue the product.” $600 is a lot of money for home users, but it’s still a pretty cheap tool for businesses, seeing as many jobs can be performed using nothing else. If Microsoft’s not making enough money off the Mac product, they have every right to cease its development. As things stand right now, Mac users need Microsoft more than Microsoft needs Mac users.
“Who cares? I don’t need Office!”
Like it or not, Microsoft Office is by far the most popular office suite on the planet. There’s a reason that every review of an alternative product compares it to Office and places strong importance on its compatibility with Office, and it’s not because Microsoft pays them. I have yet to meet a computer user who, at some point within the last few years, has not run into at least one Office document. School lecture notes, resumes, accounting numbers, you name it…the Office format is currently the standard.
You can talk about Gobe Productive and similar suites until the cows come home, but no major business is ever going to pour lots of money into a small, barely-known Office suite. Downtime when you can’t exchange files and also when you have to re-train employees makes going against the standard pretty difficult. “You don’t get fired for choosing Microsoft.” Not to mention that Office is generally considered the superior Office product on its own merits, anyway. Losing Office means how-many-million people will never be able to consider your platform. And that’s extremely important when you’re trying to increase the size of your platform’s user base.
“What about OpenOffice?”
I hope it’s obvious that if Apple loses Office, they can’t just go and write their own. Too much time, effort, and investment; Microsoft has spent years and years building and polishing Office, and Apple couldn’t simply start from scratch and have a competing product out in six months. So OpenOffice becomes the obvious alternative.
I think if Microsoft does pull out, Apple should turn to OpenOffice. Give it an amazing amount of polish and be willing to back it with the Apple name. Maybe even advertise it as a “$300 discount on a fully-loaded Mac,” without costing them a cent of hardware money. But they would, of course, be fighting a major uphill battle, to convince people that iOffice (or whatever) was capable and compatible, much as they have to fight the “Megahertz mean everything” myth (I am not claiming that Apple machines are faster; just that as a general rule, MHz aren’t everything).
Fer cryin’ out loud, how many people *really* max out the feature set of MS-Office? I used MS-Works version 3 (16-bit) for the longest time, even when I switched to Win95 and later Win98. I finally got Office 97 because I got a good deal on it. And while I admit that I really like Access, the extra features that came with Word and Excel have been pretty useless, or, at best, minor improvements for me, and hardly worth spending hundreds of dollars to get.
Interestingly, I’ve always been rather surprised that a default installation of Office doesn’t install the Works file-converters, although you can do a custom installation for that. Microsoft doesn’t want people using Works, I guess, as an Office replacement, although it’ll handle 90% of what people do in Office!
So, while I’m not a Mac user, it wouldn’t surprise me if 90% or more of people’s Office needs could be handled by AppleWorks, StarOffice, or OpenOffice.
Microsoft has got this turnover/upgrade cycle going so viciously, I think Windows XP is not just competing with other operating systems, but with older versions of Windows, as well.
No MS Office for OS X would be bad news but Apple could always develop OpenOffice.org. I read somewhere that they already have to code and working on it.
Unix has never been a popular desktop OS. The Aqua UI may not Be enough!
I always said that they should have bought BeOS! Oh well…
(Just got to get BeOS in the thread some how, ya know…)
ciao
yc
Microsoft: you’d better start selling more of your competing operating system or we’ll stop supporting you, but that doesn’t mean we’re gonna stop trying to steal your customers…
That is outright suicidal and Steve Jobs knows it!
People would simply stop buying Mac hardware.
ciao
yc
The bigger problem is that this might draw further software companies away from the Mac. I can already hear managers mumbling “Why are we still supporting the Mac? Heck, even Microsoft pulled Mac support!”
The tide is starting to turn against MS. you are seeing more and more government agencies and corporations using other solutions. I predict that within the next 12 months, we’ll see enough high-visibility companies switching to other OS’s and office products to cause a dent in the MS bottom line.
i really don’t think that the pulling of ms office will doom apple. I also think that it will be perceived more as malice than as a rational business decision. No one is going buy MS’s economic rational regarding apple OS X because MS clearly has other motives.
you are seeing more and more government agencies and corporations using other solutions
I would love to see some data supporting this assertion. Especially among major companies. For servers? Sure. For Office? I’ll believe it when I see it.
Couldn’t care less.
MS has provided nothing to the Mac platform that couldn’t be replaced by open source products.
Mozilla and OpenOffice will fill the space left by MS.
It’s Adobe which is Apple’s most important developer.
The first big misconception is how poorly Office X is selling. Since most MS Office sales on the PC side come from bundles, which means MS gets pennies on the dollor for them, they are making much larger margines on Office for OS X. Furthermore, MS never really has had a problem with estimating user demand. This is obviously a warning shot towards Apple to tone down the rhetoric.
The second big misconception is the relative ease in switching between versions of Windows versus switching between versions of MacOS. This OS 9 -> OS X transition is even a bigger switch than the Windows 3.x to Windows95 switch. That switch entailed a large jump in computing requirements and the running of legacy code in a less than perfect emulation environment. The jump from Windows9x to WindowsNT-based OS’s, W2K and WXP, also require a large jump in computing requirements, however the API is more concrete between the NT OS’s and the legacy Win9x-based OS’s. Apple provided some solace to developers with the Carbon environment, however they could have taken the next step by making classic “look” like Aqua. Early screenshots of the Classic emulator showed it, so it isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Overall Apple had better get their hardware act together. With the release of the latest PowerMacs they will still be a generation behind on bus speeds, and now on a processor that is really getting long in the tooth.
If Apple wants people to switch, they have to provide a reason. Having a stable OS is not a reason. Having a stable OS running on hardware that is twice as fast at the same cost is a reason. I switched because I love Unix. That is not a good enough reason for 90% of computer buyers however.
>>I also think that it will be perceived more as malice than as a rational business decision. No one is going buy MS’s economic rational regarding apple OS X because MS clearly has other motives.
Give me a break! Microsoft always said that they would keep making Office for Mac as long as it sells! Now that it ain’t selling, they will dump it!
MSFT is very business oriented! If Windows was not making money guess what, they would dump it and do something else that makes money.
End users will never ever like OS X on the desktop! It’s too heavy and slow!
ciao
yc
“End users will never ever like OS X on the desktop! It’s too heavy and slow!”
…thats your percetion and that perception may be because you have been spoiled using a fast and light alternative: BeOS (see..I managed to get BeOS into the thread ;o)).
Seriously though…heavy and slow it may be, but that in itself wont deter many users from using and supporting it.
http://www.apple.com
A couple days early, perhaps due to Microsoft’s plan to dump Office or due to Microsoft’s continued efforts vis-a-vis Corona to move into what is currently Apple’s media authoring/streaming space.
#m
Maybe Apple would be smart to headhunt the MS Mac business unit?
> Give me a break! Microsoft always said that they would keep making Office for Mac as long as it sells! Now that it ain’t selling, they will dump it!
The Mac BU has netted over $63.5 million on Mac OS X Office so far. Gross is over $90 million. How many companies do you know that can have a business unit make over 60% profit and growing? How many companies do you know are willing to walk away from that?
I think of only one…. and to be able to do that, a company must be a monolopy.
Some people are so blind.
If Apple had purchased Be OS rather than nextstep, and built Mac OS X with Be OS technology rather than NEXT,
not only would we have had Mac OS X at least since 1999,
Mac OS X/Be hybrid would be able to run on *all* powerpc powermacs, including the original nubus 601; 6100/7100/8100 series, and because of its performance, it would give an incentive for many more apple users to switch.
*sigh*
in the short run jobs made apple profitable. in the the long run, by killing the clones and killing Be Inc. Jobs made sure apple’s fate is sealed, and we will live in a m$ world only.
Now that I see it, I understand why Mac users aren’t switching to OS X. Mac users are of the artistic type, right?
They probably remember math in elementary school and the introduction of the great unknown, the X. They were barely coping with Mac OS 9 and now the unknown, scary, intimidating X. They probably also heard that it’s based on Unix too.
/jarek
Who knows what would have happened if they acquired Be instead of NeXT. I for one would have liked to have seen that. I loved BeOS. They did get two things from Apple that weren’t in BeOS. They got a mature product with a decent amount of realworld usage on it. Steve Jobs was also an asset when he first joined. What his contribution is now is a little bit harder to see. We’ll have to wait a year or two for our vision to reach 20/20 status again.
yes i know the old argument:
“clones were stealing apple’s market share, not growing it”
BUT the clone experiment was very brief, give it time.
steve jobs killed it
– the perfect platform for mac os x AND newer powerpc, with faster bus speeds
>>The Mac BU has netted over $63.5 million on Mac OS X Office so far. Gross is over $90 million. How many companies do you know that can have a business unit make over 60% profit and growing? How many companies do you know are willing to walk away from that?
It great that the Mac BU has indeed made Microsoft a ton of money. Bill however is not willing to lose any of that money. Especially when there are signs that if he loses for a while he may not make it back again. Microsoft is very cut throat, they will take the money they made and run.
Frankly, I think Apple should have done a better job selling OS X. The OS has been out for a long time, the apps are here, and Macs have sold resonably well since the release of OS X. Apple is just leaving it up to the users to decide when to upgrade. Well, if OS 9 works for them, that’s what they will use. If upgrading to OS X means spending lots of money for new apps in this recession, they ain’t gonna upgrade! Apple needs to give the end users more incentives. The candy coating is obviously not enough.
This Microsoft thing may be a good thing after all if it gets Apple to wake up. There are probably other software houses thinking along the same line.
They have not lost MS Office yet, they just need to wake up!
ciao
yc
ciao
yc
Since it is pretty unlikely that OSX will ever be on x86, the alternative for wannabe or old time Mac users on x86 are very limited.
Basilisk2 is stuck at system 8 & will not likely ever get PPC support but it runs all my old favs like WriteNow & Nisus etc
Another option is Cosmoe, Bill talked of Carbon layer as the reason he did the project in the 1st place. ASSUMING (BIG IF) Cosmoe was released sometime with the Carbon part done, what would be left of the Mac experience, just what would run.
Obviously not OSX, but would most of the newer apps OSX or OS9 compatible run?
If either apple, or MS MacBU developed .net for Apple, does it really matter?
Assuming .net handles themes well (which Windows.net does not
then it’ll be fine, Apple get the lattest and greatest Office, MS does no extra work, and sell even more copys.
For those of you who think Apple will move to X86, I’m afraid you’re dead wrong.
Where do you think Apple gets it’s money from? Hardware, NOT software.
CPUGuy said:
For those of you who think Apple will move to X86, I’m afraid you’re dead wrong.
Where do you think Apple gets it’s money from? Hardware, NOT software.
I think Apple will have to move to x86 at some point, most likely AMD. I admit that the PowerPC architecture is superior (in some ways), but the fierce competition between AMD and Intel is squeezing dizzying performance out of x86 for rock-bottom prices.
Now, CPUGuy, I think you are mistaken about how a switch to x86 would go. I don’t think anyone’s talking about Apple becoming a pure software company. That would be suicidal. The likely scenario is that Apple would simply use AMD chips and certain select motherboards in “shrink-wrapped” systems just like they do now with PowerPCs. In effect, they would swap out the PowerPC chip for the AMD chip, but continue to do everything else just as they always have.
Apple’s product lines would be the same, except that AMD chips would power them instead of PowerPC chips.
Apple will probably never get into the business of releasing the commercial Mac OS to run on just any ole hardware configuration. It isn’t going to happen.
(In the interests of full disclosure I have a flat-panel iMac and a dual P3 800 machine at home.)
I have a curious question. Even though OSX is for the PowerPC, but wouldn’t Apple at least generate ‘additional source of revenue’ with a OSX for X86? I know there is the Darwin Project, but that is an open source project. BTW, has anyone tried out Darwin?
Phuqker:
You only prove my point. If Apple started to JUST use the Athlon chips with some other motherboard, it’s not puting them in direct competition with MS, which a lot of people are stating.
“For those of you who think Apple will move to X86, I’m afraid you’re dead wrong.
Where do you think Apple gets it’s money from? Hardware, NOT software.”
————————————————————
We all know this. Apple has already ported OS X to Intel but will never release it. I mean, how many people would purchase a Mac when they can get a PC and run the same OS for so much less? With the exception of those who insist on having a pretty Mac on their desktop, most would simply save money by buying a PC (or better yet buying TWO PC’s).
See, Apple is really no different than Microsoft. Microsoft forces you (or did) to buy their OS if you wanted a PC (unless you built it yourself). And Apple? They force you to buy their overpriced hardware if you want to run their OS. No way Apple will ever give up all the coin they make on their hardware.
Satori.
[QUOTE]if you had to bet on a software company to survive a downturn, I hope you would pick MicroSoft.[/QUOTE]
Well, i’m not. I bet that in the long term, windows users wont follow MS with their OS life cycle. They wont spend 200$ every 12 months to get their heads on the palladium/activation-key fiasco. Somehow, they will realise, especially the corporate world.
In 1Q of 2002 Apple did $1.38 billion in revenue.
This number reflects Macintosh CPU unit sales of 746,000.
Apple’s gross margin on hardware sales was 30.7%.
In round numbers, Apple sells 3 million machines a year and produces somewhere around $6 billion in revenue.
As of April 2002, over one billion PC’s have been sold, compared to roughly 25 million Macs.
By 2008, approximately six years from now, another billion PC’s will be shipped to the world. At current rates, Apple will sell about 18 million Macs, inline with Apple’s declining worldwide market share (which is 2.4% today).
If during the next six years, Apple could capture 10% of the PC OS market, or 100M machines, and charge $100 for their operating system, they would amass $10 billion in software revenue. If they could achieve 20% share, $20B in revenue.
If Apple were to switch to an x86 platform themselves, say based on the AMD Hammer, they could still offer their own hardware to the worldwide PC market. If Apple were to decrease their hardware margins by 50%, they’d sell many more machines. Let’s say Apple doubled their machine sales, to 6 million per year.
So over the next 6 years, Apple would sell 36 million machines for a 3.6% share of that period’s sales, up from their current 2.4%. And say an additional 6.4%, or 64 million people bought their OS for an equivalent PC. That would give them an additional $6.4 billion in high-margin revenue.
Now let’s factor in application sales, namely their DVD software, Final Cut Pro, Logic, and high-end compositing tools. And whatever else they purchase. Given a new base of 100 million machines, app sales would be way up. If 50% of the 100 million users bought one app at a low price, say $200, Apple would bring in another $10B in revenue. This is a very conservative estimate.
So at the end of six years, Apple would end up with roughly the same overall margins, but with 100 million machines instead of 18 million machines running their software.
With 100 million units of OS X sold, Microsoft would be encouraged to sell Office.X, too 😉
At the end of six years, Apple would end up with $36 billion in revenue or so if they keep their current course. If they change into a mixed model company, they’d end up with the same $36 billion in revenue from hardware sales and add $16.4 billion+ from software sales, almost a 50% improvement in revenue. As Apple is already making this OS for their main machines, their incremental cost is very low. So the margin on this additional revenue will be good.
They could carefully control who their OEM OS partners are the same way Microsoft does it. Well, better, but with the same goal in mind — high margins.
Even the spreadsheet in AppleWorks makes the numbers clear.
Go for it, Steve. You’d have the world on your side.
#m
Okay I have read through pretty much all the post and have seen the full spectrum realized! I am a Mac user as most of you OSNews regulars know. I also own MS Office v. X for Mac OS X and I have stated that I love it, and I do… though Microsoft said it is seamlessly compatible with the Windows version, I have to say that they are fudging the truth a little, though 95% of the documents I deal with daily, there are a couple instances where I have issues (especially when VB script/Macros is involved). I was hoping the last update would fix some of the problems I have had with these compatibility issues, but it didn’t. I am not complaining so much because I have found workarounds or just get by without much of a fuss. I would rather run the Mac version of Office on my TiBook than deal with these overly slow PCs (Compaq DeskPros) they punish us here at work with, helk they just installed Win2k on these worthless machines and they’re even slower than when NT was running on them!
Like most people here have pointed out and the reality of the situation (I have even talked to people at work about this) that most people don’t use the special features that sets MS office apart from the rest, that’s the truth! You would laugh, but when I bought my TiBook I bought a copy of MS Office v. X for work and AppleWorks 6 for home… I like what AppleWorks has to offer!
We all know that AppleWorks 7 is in the pipeline and Mac users have been hounding Apple to add features that are really needed and not just a luxury! MS Office is nice, but it’s not perfect and there can be a successor with the right strategy put in place!
An important reason why people aren’t buying Office X may be that Office 98 runs fine under classic. In fact, I believe it’s more stable than Office X. Except for the eye candy, the upgrade doesn’t really have any good features. It’s a lot like the Office 97 vs 2000 situation on the PC, where a lot of users didn’t see the need to upgrade.
Perhaps MS should blame themselves for not improving Office enough.
If Apple had purchased Be OS rather than nextstep, and built Mac OS X with Be OS technology rather than NEXT…[OS X would have been perfect and there would be world peace]
Nonsense, BeOS was a half-finished OS. You couldn’t even print properly. There is no reason to believe that it would be finished before OS X, nor that it wouldn’t have become much slower as necessary features were added.
In the the long run, by killing the clones and killing Be Inc. Jobs made sure apple’s fate is sealed, and we will live in a m$ world only.
Cloning merely eroded Apple’s profits and brought them to the brink of death. It could only have succeeded 10 years earlier, but it’s not Steve Jobs fault they didn’t go for it then. I really don’t know how Apple killed Be except for not buying it. It seems that you have some kind of personal grudge against Apple, when you really should be blaming Gassee for overasking. If anyone is to blame for the death of Be, it is him. He took the risk of trying to bleed Apple dry, Steve Jobs was smart and produced a better offer. And without Apple, Be didn’t seem to have a future. Again, is Apple/Steve Jobs to blame when someone cannot make a profit with his product?
PS. The next version of OS X, Jaguar, will be much faster. Of course, OS X has vector-based drawing and other goodies that Be didn’t have, so it will never be as fast, but I expect it to be perfectly usable to most of us.
“End users will never ever like OS X on the desktop! It’s too heavy and slow!”
Well, windows95 was heavier and slower than windows 3.1, but that didn’t discourage many users to switch. Windows2000 is heavier and slower than NT, but that didn’t……
etc.
etc.
etc.
“It’s a lot like the Office 97 vs 2000 situation on the PC, where a lot of users didn’t see the need to upgrade.”
Yeah. You are right. Where I am working, for example, we have just office 97 (and don’t plan to switch to 2000, as long as it is still possible (check the new Microsoft licensing system )).
Wah, they only sold 300K copies of Office OS X. Some companies don’t rev their OS/Office Suite every other year to gen sales. It’s time that Microsoft faced up to the reality that Mac users don’t feel compled to upgrade every other year and start trying to make money on longer duration life cycles. Maybe if they could do that and succeed they’d be prepared when the PC industry slows down.
Actually, the reason why the sales lagged is that Office v. X isn’t available for Mac OS 9 and below. And there is 2.5 million users of Mac OS X – how much market is there? Instead of spending money trying to convert current Mac OS users to OS X, it decided to spend money converting PC users.
So MS comes up with this crap story about not enough marketing from Apple, tell me, honestly, have you not seen those ‘switch’ ads a thousand times now?
Though there is a remote possiblity that the Switch campaign could have contributed to this, but it is clear it isn’t the main reason. Simply enough: Microsoft told it would sell 750,000 copies of Office v. X, but it only sold 300,000 copies. Sure, blame it on Microsoft, but I wonder, why was Office 2001, even witht the same price, manage to sell so well? Simply because there is a much bigger market. OS X has 2.5 million users, and this is mainly because of Apple.
MS claims that sales of Office are not as desired on the Mac, well hell, shock to me, the average Joe and Mary doesn’t have $499 to spend on software?
Oh, shock to me, the average anti-MS pro-Apple pays $1,400 for a piece of hardware he could get for less than $1,000 else where. And, oh, shock to me, that Office v. X is $400, the same price Office 2001 was sold – and Office 2001 is so much more successful than Office v. X
Office users on Windows only pay for upgrades as most received them as an OEM installation.
Blatant lie. Most of Office users are users of either corporate discounted versions (bulk, for offices and so on) and retail. Office is hardly bundled in machines, and is only bundled in some machines from major OEM – all of them targeting companies. Also, OEM versions aren’t entitled to a discounted upgrade (yes, retail packs if you are a user of Office 2000 OEM and want to upgrade to Office XP).
I don’t think that there will be a serious uptake of OSX until the designers’ holy trinity of Illustrator, Photoshop and Quark are released for OSX.
The last I checked, they are all available on OS X.
If not maybe this could be an opertunity for the likes of Gobe.
Gobe is more of a contender to the likes of MS Works and Apple Works.
now is the time to strike! if they finally will go over to the much cheaper x86 arch and clean up ms on their own turf … maybe a real x86 os battle could ensue .. it would be fascinating to watch …
And they would die off faster than you could say “Be Inc.”.
First of all, Mac users do (or will) have another choice: OpenOffice.
The last I checked, the OpenOffice.org port to Mac OS X still uses XDarwin, and non-native UI, and non-standard APIs.
In a few years MS office will be replaced by open office, star office, gobe office etc.
If there is such a thing as gobe office… Anyway, it would be unlikely in a few years time that OpenOffice.org, StarOffice or gobeProductive would ever bring down MS Office, MS’ biggest cash cow.
– OpenOffice.org –> You think MS Office is slow and bloated? Well, it would look lean, small, and fast when compared to OpenOffice.org. Reason? OpenOffice.org uses non-standard APIs like UNO, and therefore it is slower than a product that is using the native APIs. Plus, if you ever checked OpenOffice.org code, you would find how dispicable it is.
– StarOffice –> This is a cheap attempt by Sun to irritate Microsoft. It is the best attempt yet to bring down Microsoft, but apparently, Sun doesn’t know much about the field.
– gobeProductive –> This is suppose to be a altenative to MS Work you dope! Look at the feature set!
This MS’s way of trying to steal apple’s thunder. Since they can’t do it with innovation or excitement (bill gates does not exactly exude excitement) then they have to do it by threatening apple. Apple will live with or without MS. In fact, it won’t be that tough to come up with a better product then MS office.
Well, they are trying to steal Apple’s thunder. They are unveiling Corona (WMP9), and a lot of other technology during the same period as MacWorld. Besides, Microsoft isn’t the only one facing this OS X problem with Apple – thousands of others, like Adobe, Corel (especially), Macromedia and the list goes on.
Apple already has its own office suite, called AppleWorks. It comes bundled with every Macintosh, or is available retail for $79. AppleWorks was recently upgraded to open and save files in Microsoft Office formats — a move which many Mac aficionados saw as an opening salvo against Microsoft.
AppleWork’s feature set is only comparable to that of MS Works. And I had tried it with an IRC friend with AppleWorks – the filters suck. It doesn’t at all render anything properly, some of the text go missing, the fonts are all wrong and so on.
Maybe because the average Mac user doesn’t want Office? Doesn’t need Office that badly?
Or maybe, there aren’t enough users of the OS.
Similarly, I see Apple having created another dillemna for themselves: Since they’ve now based their OS off BSD, this now means that many free/open-source Linux and Unix apps are now available for OSX as well (or, in some cases, are easily ported over to OSX).
This is not seen as a problem to existing third party Mac developers. Why? Most, if not all, of these apps needs X11 and most, if not all, of these apps are underfeatured. I don’t know of any Mac-based print shop that recently move of OS X to dump Photoshop and Quark for the likes of GIMP and Kontour, both running under a X11 implementation.
If they have old Mac software (<=OS9), they can continue to run this under OSX, albeit without the benefits of the new UI….
And the new AA, and being slow as hell, and…
Why buy MS Office for $300+ if you can get OpenOffice for free?
Because OpenOffice.org is slow. And it is even more slow on its alpha stage port to OS X because it needs X. I doubt many users want to use such an software.
… buy a 2Ghz Pentium 4 box for about $650, whereas a dual 1Ghz box..
You are best off comparing that $650 P4 with an iMac because with that price, it for sure would come with bad hardware like SDRAM, TNT Pro and so on. Anyway, you could get a 2.4GHz from Dell, with all the features the “Ultimate” PowerMac G4 has, as well as its own goodies (like Quaddro4) and still be able to beat the PowerMac in terms of price.
As far as MS Office for the Mac goes… Personally, I think MS charges too much money for that stuff, but maybe that’s just me. So I rarely use MS Office under any OS. So, it won’t bother me in the least.
But then again, what other profitable company had managed to undercharge Microsoft? Let’s see, Corel almost bankrupted because of WP Office, and is now focusing on graphics. Sun has yet to make a profit on StarOffice. And the list goes on.
Even if Apple were to port all of MacOS X to the x86, it would probably be setup to require a non-standard setup so that you would still have to buy hardware from Apple.
But at least the hardware wouldn’t be so backward.
And Macs have been losing marketshare right?
Actually, they gained 0.03% of the USA market in the first quarter.
Office has not conquered the market because of its quality, but because of its ubiquity.
Breath in, breath of. Now think of the people that dominated the productivity applications pre-Office. Now think when Office was just release. Was it better than the competitor’s? If you answer no, you are a liar.
AppleWorks already meets 95% of the average user’s requirements
Please, users that are satified with AppleWorks would continue to use AppleWorks. But remember, AppleWorks had never been made to compete with MS Office.
I really don’t think Microsoft is actually going to discontinue Office, though.
They would release another major version, and if sales aren’t good (e.g. cover up investment and make a good buck), they would close down the port.
If Apple could guarantee to ISV’s that Microsoft would never create software for their platform, it would be a blessing, not a curse. ISV’s would like to have an environment that was protected from the ruthless Microsoft monopoly.
The only market on Mac OS that Microsoft dominates and there is altenatives is Internet Explorer. Office has no altenatives on Mac OS, and Apple’s major ISV partners aren’t Microsoft competitors.
1) Apple is focusing on multimedia, low-end and high-end.
Low-end? I don’t see any machines from Apple that could be called low-end.
3) Apple is de-emphasizing business use of their PC’s.
Tell that to the webmaster that is maitaining this website: http://www.apple.com/smallbusiness/
have yet to meet a computer user who, at some point within the last few years, has not run into at least one Office document.
Even RMS had ran into .doc documents 🙂
So OpenOffice becomes the obvious alternative.
Go and check out the code of OpenOffice.org. It is easier doing a rewrite of it than to make a full port of it to Mac OS.
Fer cryin’ out loud, how many people *really* max out the feature set of MS-Office?….
Now that you are using Office 97, migrate back to the old version of Office and see if you like it. I have tried this and never ever resorted to this complain. Besides, every type of user is using different sets of features – it is impossible to say “Okay, here are the features the users really use, let’s cut off the rest”.
No MS Office for OS X would be bad news but Apple could always develop OpenOffice.org. I read somewhere that they already have to code and working on it.
The closest to a full port is well over 3-4 years.
The tide is starting to turn against MS. you are seeing more and more government agencies and corporations using other solutions.
Most of these people who are starting to use altenatives are
a) stingy
b) don’t need Office’s features
c) hate macro viruses and suspect there is some spy code supplying the US goverment of China’s latest weapon system.
But most companies most likely wouldn’t migrate from Office to other stuff because there isn’t features (especially macros) they need, plus it would take a lot of money to migrate (re-education, temporary lost of productivity and so on).
MS has provided nothing to the Mac platform that couldn’t be replaced by open source products.
Mozilla and OpenOffice will fill the space left by MS.
It’s Adobe which is Apple’s most important developer.
Let’s see. Firstly, Mozilla does not at all follow any of Aqua’s HI Guide. And secondly, there is no full port of OpenOffice.org coming out anytime soon.
Since most MS Office sales on the PC side come from bundles, which means MS gets pennies on the dollor for them, they are making much larger margines on Office for OS X.
I want some data to back up your claims. The last I check, most machines, especially from big name OEMs, don’t bundle Office. Also, most sales of Office is done in bulk to corps and government, rather via OEM or retail channels.
Apple provided some solace to developers with the Carbon environment
The problem with Carbon is that Apple doesn’t allow Carbon apps to use as many Mac OS X features as possible, as it is trying to push Cocoa.
Early screenshots of the Classic emulator showed it, so it isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Most of these applications’s UI was built and tested on the Platinum look and feel. There is so much problems relating to such a move that Apple didn’t do it.
MSFT is very business oriented! If Windows was not making money guess what, they would dump it and do something else that makes money.
On the side note, Microsoft makes much more money via Office than with Windows.
…thats your percetion and that perception may be because you have been spoiled using a fast and light alternative: BeOS (see..I managed to get BeOS into the thread ;o)).
But people who have use Windows or Mac OS 9 and below would find Mac OS X sluggish.
A couple days early, perhaps due to Microsoft’s plan to dump Office or due to Microsoft’s continued efforts vis-a-vis Corona to move into what is currently Apple’s media authoring/streaming space.
Nah, Corona is made more for set up boxes and HDTV. Besides, Microsoft does have the power to push the adoption of Corona over MPEG4 because it has a larger userbase and Corona in many ways is better than MPEG4 (except for audio, though).
The Mac BU has netted over $63.5 million on Mac OS X Office so far. Gross is over $90 million. How many companies do you know that can have a business unit make over 60% profit and growing? How many companies do you know are willing to walk away from that?
Notice most of the money made come from Office 2001 which Microsoft wants to phrase out. Office X didn’t meet the demand it had expected because OS X isn’t on most machines.
in the short run jobs made apple profitable. in the the long run, by killing the clones and killing Be Inc. Jobs made sure apple’s fate is sealed, and we will live in a m$ world only.
But of course, if Be took over, Apple would die faster.
BUT the clone experiment was very brief, give it time.
But then again, Apple is an hardware company. Plus, the clone experiment failed misserably. But maybe Jobs should adopt the method used by Palms, it is also quite sucessful.
Another option is Cosmoe, Bill talked of Carbon layer as the reason he did the project in the 1st place. ASSUMING (BIG IF) Cosmoe was released sometime with the Carbon part done, what would be left of the Mac experience, just what would run.
But Bill had made it clear that the Carbon layer wouldn’t have binary and perhaps source compatiblity. Plus, it connects to Cosmoe via BeOS’s APIs. In other words, Carbon is layered on Be’s API which is layered on Cosmoe APIs…
I have a curious question. Even though OSX is for the PowerPC, but wouldn’t Apple at least generate ‘additional source of revenue’ with a OSX for X86? I know there is the Darwin Project, but that is an open source project. BTW, has anyone tried out Darwin?
It lacks drivers, hardly usable.
See, Apple is really no different than Microsoft. Microsoft forces you (or did) to buy their OS if you wanted a PC (unless you built it yourself).
Actually, when you buy a new PC with Windows, don’t boot into Windows. Say that you do not agree with the EULA, and you would be given (albeit, a late) refund. Plus, there are many, albeit not so famous, OEMs like Pogo Linux that do not bundle Windows.
Apple doesn’t need M$ Office to hold it’s niche market. But it probably needs M$ Office to expand into enterprise computing in a significant way. I would say that OS X has Microsoft worried about the future of their operating system. I wonder how well XP is selling these days?
Well, i’m not. I bet that in the long term, windows users wont follow MS with their OS life cycle. They wont spend 200$ every 12 months to get their heads on the palladium/activation-key fiasco. Somehow, they will realise, especially the corporate world.
Actually most of them don’t. They only upgrade when there is a significant change. For example, Win95 users most probably won’t upgrade to Win98. For significant upgrades, they normally buy a new machine.
Wah, they only sold 300K copies of Office OS X. Some companies don’t rev their OS/Office Suite every other year to gen sales.
Actually, the reason why the sales lagged is that Office v. X isn’t available for Mac OS 9 and below. And there is 2.5 million users of Mac OS X – how much market is there? Instead of spending money trying to convert current Mac OS users to OS X, it decided to spend money converting PC users.
So MS comes up with this crap story about not enough marketing from Apple, tell me, honestly, have you not seen those ‘switch’ ads a thousand times now?
Though there is a remote possiblity that the Switch campaign could have contributed to this, but it is clear it isn’t the main reason. Simply enough: Microsoft told it would sell 750,000 copies of Office v. X, but it only sold 300,000 copies. Sure, blame it on Microsoft, but I wonder, why was Office 2001, even witht the same price, manage to sell so well? Simply because there is a much bigger market. OS X has 2.5 million users, and this is mainly because of Apple.
MS claims that sales of Office are not as desired on the Mac, well hell, shock to me, the average Joe and Mary doesn’t have $499 to spend on software?
Oh, shock to me, the average anti-MS pro-Apple pays $1,400 for a piece of hardware he could get for less than $1,000 else where. And, oh, shock to me, that Office v. X is $400, the same price Office 2001 was sold – and Office 2001 is so much more successful than Office v. X
Office users on Windows only pay for upgrades as most received them as an OEM installation.
Blatant lie. Most of Office users are users of either corporate discounted versions (bulk, for offices and so on) and retail. Office is hardly bundled in machines, and is only bundled in some machines from major OEM – all of them targeting companies. Also, OEM versions aren’t entitled to a discounted upgrade (yes, retail packs if you are a user of Office 2000 OEM and want to upgrade to Office XP).
If not maybe this could be an opertunity for the likes of Gobe.
Gobe is more of a contender to the likes of MS Works and Apple Works.
now is the time to strike! if they finally will go over to the much cheaper x86 arch and clean up ms on their own turf … maybe a real x86 os battle could ensue .. it would be fascinating to watch …
And they would die off faster than you could say “Be Inc.”.
In a few years MS office will be replaced by open office, star office, gobe office etc.
If there is such a thing as gobe office… Anyway, it would be unlikely in a few years time that OpenOffice.org, StarOffice or gobeProductive would ever bring down MS Office, MS’ biggest cash cow.
– OpenOffice.org –> You think MS Office is slow and bloated? Well, it would look lean, small, and fast when compared to OpenOffice.org. Reason? OpenOffice.org uses non-standard APIs like UNO, and therefore it is slower than a product that is using the native APIs. Plus, if you ever checked OpenOffice.org code, you would find how dispicable it is.
– StarOffice –> This is a cheap attempt by Sun to irritate Microsoft. It is the best attempt yet to bring down Microsoft, but apparently, Sun doesn’t know much about the field.
– gobeProductive –> This is suppose to be a altenative to MS Work you dope! Look at the feature set!
This MS’s way of trying to steal apple’s thunder. Since they can’t do it with innovation or excitement (bill gates does not exactly exude excitement) then they have to do it by threatening apple.
Well, they are trying to steal Apple’s thunder. They are unveiling Corona (WMP9), and a lot of other technology during the same period as MacWorld. Besides, Microsoft isn’t the only one facing this OS X problem with Apple – thousands of others, like Adobe, Corel (especially), Macromedia and the list goes on.
Apple already has its own office suite, called AppleWorks. It comes bundled with every Macintosh, or is available retail for $79. AppleWorks was recently upgraded to open and save files in Microsoft Office formats — a move which many Mac aficionados saw as an opening salvo against Microsoft.
AppleWork’s feature set is only comparable to that of MS Works. And I had tried it with an ICQ friend with AppleWorks – the filters suck. It doesn’t at all render anything properly, some of the text go missing, the fonts are all wrong and so on.
Similarly, I see Apple having created another dillemna for themselves: Since they’ve now based their OS off BSD, this now means that many free/open-source Linux and Unix apps are now available for OSX as well (or, in some cases, are easily ported over to OSX).
This is not seen as a problem to existing third party Mac developers. Why? Most, if not all, of these apps needs X11 and most, if not all, of these apps are underfeatured.
Why buy MS Office for $300+ if you can get OpenOffice for free?
Because OpenOffice.org is slow. And it is even more slow on its alpha stage port to OS X because it needs X11. I doubt many users want to use such an software.
… buy a 2Ghz Pentium 4 box for about $650, whereas a dual 1Ghz box..
You are best off comparing that $650 P4 with an iMac because with that price, it for sure would come with bad hardware like SDRAM, TNT Pro and so on. Anyway, you could get a 2.4GHz from Dell, with all the features the “Ultimate” PowerMac G4 has, as well as its own goodies (like Quaddro4) and still be able to beat the PowerMac in terms of price.
As far as MS Office for the Mac goes… Personally, I think MS charges too much money for that stuff, but maybe that’s just me. So I rarely use MS Office under any OS. So, it won’t bother me in the least.
But then again, what other profitable company had managed to undercharge Microsoft? Let’s see, Corel almost bankrupted because of WP Office, and is now focusing on graphics. Sun has yet to make a profit on StarOffice. And the list goes on.
Even if Apple were to port all of MacOS X to the x86, it would probably be setup to require a non-standard setup so that you would still have to buy hardware from Apple.
But at least the hardware wouldn’t be so backward.
The one billion number actually includes Macs, and pre-PC stuff. As long it is in the same market as PCs, it is included.
Nonsense, BeOS was a half-finished OS. You couldn’t even print properly. There is no reason to believe that it would be finished before OS X, nor that it wouldn’t have become much slower as necessary features were added.
From a Next diehard (not me, a ICQ friend): Next’s printing sucks. Prints jobs rarely finishes, and the printing server normally crashes. Hmmmm.
It seems that you have some kind of personal grudge against Apple, when you really should be blaming Gassee for overasking.
Well, Apple paid more for Next than what Be offered.
Well, windows95 was heavier and slower than windows 3.1, but that didn’t discourage many users to switch.
Hmmm, a lot of people, especially my brother, would argue that with you. But then again, I wasn’t a geek back then, never used Win3.1 🙂
> Mac OS X/Be hybrid would be able to run on *all* powerpc
> powermacs, including the original nubus 601;
> 6100/7100/8100 series, and because of its performance, it
> would give an incentive for many more apple users to
> switch.
This is untrue. BeOS PPC does not support any NuBUS macs, and IIRC only supports PCI Macs with a 603 or better (up to G2 of course..) Whilst Apple could have got it to run on all kinds of exotic Mac, what would have been the benefit? I used to love my old 6100, but it’s slower than hell now, and no more than a doorstop at home.
BeOS runs well on Mac hardware, so long as it’s a common model. A lot of clones have problems, and my 9500 had issues with the stock ATi Mach64 video card (now replaced by an IMS Twin Turbo 128.)
I don’t think Apple could have made “Be” OSX appear any quicker, and the x86 version would never have surfaced at all.
<< Yeah. You are right. Where I am working, for example, we have just office 97 (and don’t plan to switch to 2000, as long as it is still possible (check the new Microsoft licensing system )). >>
I bought Office for my Mac because I had to. I bought Office 97 back in college, and don’t plan on buying Office for the PC again. I’ll just wait for it to come bundled for essentially free on any PC I plan on purchasing later.
My wife and I are at the beach and I’m only able to check in with my iBook. This Microsoft and Apple thing is a riot.
Many posters have brought up many remarks with merit. All I’ll say is that what MS is doing with this Office business and other not-yet-existing product announcements is just trying to get back at Apple for the Switch campaign. That’s how Gates is (and Jobs would be doig the same thing, if the positions were reversed). Really cheap shots though.
As for AppleWorks, many would be amazed at what you can do with it and I believe an AppleWorks upgrade may be announced tomorrow. Unlike Office for Mac (or goBe) it has a database module that is very good up to a certain point.
I recall when Gil Amelio, after buying NeXT, said that you couldn’t even print with BeOS. Well, as it turned out, you could print with BeOS long before you could with OS X. That’s just for the record 😉
There is also ThinkFree Office. I know Eugenia will shudder at that, as it is Java <g>. It is an interesting product though.
Time to hit the beach!!
>>Well, windows95 was heavier and slower than windows 3.1, but that didn’t discourage many users to switch.
Windows2000 is heavier and slower than NT, but that didn’t……
Dude, Windows 2000 is extremely fast compared to MacOS X. For example, Win2K SP2 runs very well on an old ThinkPad 570 366 MHz, 128MB RAM. Don’t try this with OS X, you would need a G4 800 Mhz and 256MB RAM for equivalent performance.
You see, as Winblows went from 3.1 to NT 3.51, to 4 to 2000, the OS became very stable while remaining pretty fast. From OS 9 to OS X gained stability but dropped greatly in performance.
ciao
yc
M$ “bundles” with windows a variety of middlewear – media player v.s real player, ie vs netscape, defragers v.s utilities, msn messenger vs AOL AIM, etc. etc.
Why doesn’t Apple “integrate” appleworks with Mac OS X, make the two inseperable, which would greatly enhance the functionality of both OSX and appleworks.
Additionally, by tightly integtrating the two seamlessly, it will offer new levels of UI possibilities.
Why switch to Mac OSX? b/c the integrated clarisworks allows it to achieve a level of functionality not possible on windows
“This is untrue. BeOS PPC does not support any NuBUS macs, and IIRC only supports PCI Macs with a 603 or better (up to G2 of course..) Whilst Apple could have got it to run on all kinds of exotic Mac, what would have been the benefit? I used to love my old 6100, but it’s slower than hell now, and no more than a doorstop at home.”
But for those who still use the old 6100, running a beos (which could easily be made to run on the nubus mac) would give this old machines a new lease on life.
as long as a pc/mac is useful, there is no need to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
that’s why i read http://www.osnews.com
>>Dude, Windows 2000 is extremely fast compared to MacOS X. For example, Win2K SP2 runs very well on an old ThinkPad 570 366 MHz, 128MB RAM. Don’t try this with OS X, you would need a G4 800 Mhz and 256MB RAM for equivalent performance.<<
Actually I have seen just the opposite… we have Compaq DeskPros here rquipped with Pentium IIs/IIIs (400 MHz) running Windows 2000 and slower compared to Windows NT! Comparing this with my iMac G3 (400 MHz) at home running Mac OS X (10.1.5), OS X is faster at almost everything, though my TiBook G4 does show its advantage when comparing the G3 to G4!
To be honest I have always found Windows to be slow, which is probably why it got its nickname ‘Windoze’ in the first place. Of course you (like me) have been spoiled by BeOS’s speed, so anything less would be uncivilized!
Rajan, I have never seen posts that long…much less three in a row 🙂
Why buy MS Office for $300+ if you can get OpenOffice for free?
Because OpenOffice.org is slow.
————-
I doubt many users list a 3 second or so faster startup time for Office as a reason for forking out 300 US dollars.
…is what Rajan touched on, in at least part of that huge post. Look at this from Microsoft’s point of view a moment, without any whining about Apple’s technical merits/demerits:
There are two real markets for OS X: new computer sales and existing OS 9 users. Apple has largely been targeting new computer sales, and with some good reason: first-time computer buyers aren’t going to be bothered by buying new software versions and they’re not going to be subject to the “that’s not the way we did it under OS 9, goddammit!” syndrome. And, of course, they make a lot more money this way. (Targeting both PC and Mac users who haven’t upgraded their systems in, say, four years or more also gives them a lot of these benefits.)
But this isn’t the market that most benefits Microsoft. For one, they’re a Macintosh software developer with significant vested development costs in OS 9 software; for another, every OS X sale to a new customer represents an indirect loss of a Windows XP sale. So converting existing OS 9 customers to OS X is a unique win-win situation for Microsoft: their Windows group doesn’t lose sales (these people weren’t Windows users to start with), and they can make an Office X upgrade sale. Ultimately, what Microsoft is whining about here has nothing to do with Apple’s new system sales–it has to do with Apple’s lack of interest in making a version of OS X that runs on their older hardware, because Microsoft thinks that’s hurting their chances to get those people to upgrade to Office X.
2.5 million OS X sales to a market of 25 million Mac users represents a 10% penetration rate in a year, and Apple’s projections are to double that by the end of this year. I don’t think this is out of line with the conversion rates Microsoft had for Windows upgrades, and I think Microsoft knows that–and they know full well that the shift between OS 9 and OS X is a much more serious proposition than a shift between Windows 95 and Windows NT. And to top it all off, beyond the OS itself, the difference between Office 2001 and Office X is very minimal.
This is political posturing on Microsoft’s part. Say what you will about Apple (and people always do), but they know how to play public relations in a way Microsoft only dreams of, and anyone who thinks Microsoft isn’t worried about that advantage doesn’t understand just how important marketing is. Microsoft does. (Most geeks–and most industry pundits, apparently–don’t, which is why we’ve been hearing predictions of Apple’s imminent demise for fifteen years now.)
(Most geeks–and most industry pundits, apparently–don’t, which is why we’ve been hearing predictions of Apple’s imminent demise for fifteen years now.)
———–
BeOS zealots said the same thing. “you’ve been predicting our doom for x years, but we’re still here”…blah, blah.
Just a thought…
BeOS zealots said the same thing. “you’ve been predicting our doom for x years, but we’re still here”…blah, blah.
Just a thought…
A few fallacies here. The first is that Apple has proved it can weather bad storms, which the may be entering right now. The second is that Apple has a solid sales base to begin with, whereas Be was financed almost strictly from venture capital and not product revenues. Lastly, Apple has a lot of cash reserves now. This makes it easier for them to weather the storm than some of the other computer manufacturers. Evidence of this is all the company purchases we’ve been seeing. That’s not to say that Apple won’t be dead three years from now, but it does say that it isn’t something imminent or inevitable.
the saying goes like this…
“Apple… going out of business since 1984!”
🙂
dreamcast was better than ps1 and n64 yes, but sony ps2 was suprerior. very few dc gmaes used win ce. yes, it has been my position that despite jobs momentary success, apple’s niche made beos a better choice than next.
office is overpriced, overweight, and just plain over. come down from the high clouds of redmond to a reasonable price that we won’t regret the minute after spending, and maybe more people will think about it. stop releasing betas in final product packaging which need to be upgraded with security release packs only weeks after you just said this was “the most secure version of office ever”.
and stop crying. you guys get enough sales to feed all of africa, asia, and antarctica. geez, have you ever taken a moment to think that your software sucks? what, do you expect mac users and others to just go dumb and downgrade to crappy software?
Microsoft needs help. You must understand that they can’t afford to lose a cent with their Mac software while selling the Xbox at the price of a banana trying to establish a new monopoly on another market.
While other people have rebutted this, I’ll note that I don’t recall any BeOS user ever suffering under the illusion that Be’s continued existence, much less success, was absolutely guaranteed. I doubt there were more than a few hundred thousand copies of BeOS out there (excluding the free BeOS 5 PE download). Mac users are down over 50% from the platform’s heyday, if I’m remembering the figures right, but even the “low point” of today is at least two orders of magnitude greater than the userbase for BeOS ever was.
We thought BeOS had great potential, and I’m not alone in thinking Be’s biggest (if far from only) mistake was sacrificing the embryonic desktop market for the ultimately stillborn internet appliance market. Those of us with intact senses of irony can’t help but be (wryly) amused that the niches Apple is explicitly targeting with OS X and iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, and even Final Cut–essentially, slick, often real-time media manipulation–are in fact the very niches BeOS excelled in.
XBox, hahahahahahahahahahahaha…..Did anyone ever wonder why the superior platform Dreamcast failed? It was because Microsoft had a hand in it, now XBox is not doing as well as hoped so it must be the same thing right? I know I never will buy a Microsoft branded home entertainment unit.
Onto the topic of Office – if Microsoft would just sell me Excel for $75 I would be happy. Word, who cares anymore, everyone I send a message or letter to gets the email/attachment in RTF format. It is the one single standard which every word processor in the world can read and many corporations are now going this route.
It is really ashame that many people on here don’t care or are wishing that Microsoft stops production of Office for Mac OS X. Office is good software that maintains compatibility with the Windows Version well. I think that if I was an Apple user, I would be sad to see any application taken off my platform. We have already discussed some of the business decisions (hardware pricing and proprietary features) that have held Apple back in a previous article. But what I don’t understand is why people want less software on their platform, when good software is what makes a platform worth using? Anyone that tries to convince you that the Open Office and Star Office are up to the job that MS-Office can provide has not used MS Office extensively.
What should Apple do? Create an environment where they gain as many users as they can. I don’t feel that their business decisions are created to do this. One big term that Apple has left out of their business equation is that it takes a critical mass of users to make a platform flourish; it takes a critical mass of users to encourage software companies to write good software. Why would any software company want to jump on the Mac bandwagon, when the number of users is REALLY small as compared to PC users? Hell, even Linux as a platform is growing much more important to Mac OS, just because (1) you can run it on non-proprietary hardware, (2) its free to low cost, (3) there is a growing number of users asking for Linux versions of software that they pay good money for. Maybe it would be a good idea to port Aqua to a Linux Distribution for the Power PC? There would be more pre-compiled software available…and why is not Apple helping out with projects like Wine, that can run Windows in a Unix environment? This would allow Windows apps to run in Aqua without a x86 emulator.
Sounds like a few easy ways to get more users, something that Apple definitely needs to maintain a critical mass…
DANO!
Microsoft and the state of Maryland’s Colleges have made a deal and I get Mircosoft products for $5 a disc, so office for Mac OS X is $5 and officeXP $20
once folk like dano start getting dreamy-eyed about supposedly “good” software like office, i am instantly reminded as to why microsoft has absolutely no problem maintaining and enlarging its “we’re not a monopoly” monopoly.
hail to microsoft! “good” job. “good” luck.
>>once folk like dano start getting dreamy-eyed about supposedly “good” software like office, i am instantly reminded as to why microsoft has absolutely no problem maintaining and enlarging its “we’re not a monopoly” monopoly.
Dude, Monopoly or not, no one has got an office package that can beat MS-Office period. Even Microsoft haters have to give way to this one.
Dano.
Microsoft Office is better, feature by feature, and in ease of use, than any of its alleged competitors.
I say alleged competitors because Office is as much a monopoly as Windows. The sad truth is that Microsoft Office has no competitors.
Having gone head to head with Microsoft when I worked at Borland, it’s not a quest for the faint of heart.
Wordperfect on DOS turned into Worddefect on Windows. They simply didn’t get GUI.
Quattro Pro for Windows actually won some comparisons vs. Excel, but Borland got hammered and couldn’t keep up with Microsoft. And Borland’s infamous “WinDOS” marketing scheme fucked the launch of QPW. WinDOS was a bundle of the DOS and Windows versions of Quattro. Philippe went into Fry’s Electronics and asked for “Quattro Pro for Windows” and was taken on a long tour to some far away section where the Fry’s employee told him, “We don’t have Quattro Pro for Windows, but we do have it for WinDOS, whatever that is.”
Lotus also mounted a credible effort vs. Microsoft, but failed in many of the same ways. They took a decent Windows word processor (Ami Pro) but coupled it with a spreadsheet that had huge pains going from DOS to Windows (1-2-3).
And neither Borland/Wordperfect/Corel nor Lotus ever flushed out their office suite to be as feature rich as Microsoft so they’d lose every comparison chart review in PCWeek/PCMag.
Much as there is no company that is able/willing to mount a competitor to .NET, there is no company that seems to mount a credible competitor to MS Office.
I am discounting Sun because their offering is decidely inferior to MS Office. It would take a suite offering that has clear and obvious advantages in both power and ease of use and price to combat MS Office.
As I’ve said before, the heart of the Microsoft vampire is the desktop. If a concerted effort could be made by the rebel alliance to drive a stake into the desktop, there is a chance of victory vs. Microsoft. Switching metaphors, if you all you do is fly your x-wings around the deathstar, you will never win. Microsoft will destroy your homeworld.
#m
Anyone that tries to convince you that the Open Office and Star Office are up to the job that MS-Office can provide has not used MS Office extensively.
———
I disagree with you on this one. OpenOffice surprised me so much that I put away my pirated Office 2000 in favour of it. (and saved gobs of HD space in the process)
First off about dreamcast it was imo the best system available until recently. Some of its later games still look better then 90% of the ps2, gamecube or xbox stuff, granted thats because sega made most of thier games they really knew how to push the system to its limits. The irony about it is it outsold the n64 worldwide but since they made most of the games at in house developers they couldn’t compete (they pay for developing while nintendo gets a liscensing fee for doing no work, not good for sega). Add to that the fact that nintendo has the cash cows of gameboy (3rd rate handheld imo, even the gba is crap) and pokemon (blatant ripoff of digimon, but sadly more popular). Before I get blasted for the gba comment I will say it has 1 great feature; long battery life. But thats because its a horrible design, I mean 2 inch screen with no backlight, I have yet to find the right amount of light and angle to play tony hawk 3 and be able to see it properly. Interestingly thats the 1 thing sega handhelds sucked at. The gamegear had a great feel, great screen, good selection of games and great accessories (the tv tuner rocked) but it lasted a hair over 3 hours on 4 AA (or was it 6?). btw most of its games looked better then the gba ones of today do, even though it was a single 8bit processor and a game hasn’t been made for it in at least 6 years. And the nomad was even better, I mean playing genesis games on the go owns, but it burns through 8AA batteries in around 2 hours.
On to the real topic, office. No other office suite comes close to being as good as ms office. To most home users others are good enough (hell I use rtf for non work documents myself), but none of them do the advanced features nearly as well. And before someone says you don’t need them walk into any office in the world and tell them that, you’ll get laughed at. The secrateries, assistants, clerks, office management staff all need the advanced features. I’ve done work as a clerk and 90% of my work would’ve been impossible in any other office suite. So granted its too pricey for some consumers but until a competitor (i.e. an actual company because nobody would take the chance that months worth of work would be lost because an opensource app was discontinued or key developers left, fair or unfair thats the mindset you’ll run into) can implement the same feature set ms office will never be unseated as the standard. Thats not even taking into account the proprietary standards (yea its a kick in the head ms does it, but so would apple, or sun in they were top dog). btw whoever thinks apple isn’t trying to move into offices is nuts, they’re pushing hard to move into non-“creative” fields because theres more money to be had in them (as ms office has proven by its sales). If apple stays primarily in the creative field they will stagnate and die (it’d be much easier for windows to move into that field then apple into office environments, especially considering most of the big name apps are available for windows). Lastly even if this announcement wasn’t brought on by the switch campaign I think it was a mistake. Ms is the key developer for mac (those of you who say adobe are dead wrong, their apps don’t compare to ms apps for mac sales wise) and pissing them off to lure a few thousand converts (I don’t see millions of windows users saying the hell with this platform we know lets switch to something completely different) is plain old stupid. Granted the original imac was a shocker sales wise, but that was during a huge spike in computer sales, not a lull like we’re in today. We’ll see though, maybe jobs can sweet talk those macheads who haven’t converted yet into converting. If he doesn’t apple has brewed itself a fresh pot of shit, hope they like the taste.
It is really a shame that many people on here don’t care or are wishing that Microsoft stops production of Office for Mac OS X.
Did I read a different thread? I really can’t remember many people who asked for that. Most people either bitched about the price, about the monopoly that Office has (in general, not just on the Mac) or about the lack of new features. Some hoped that the monopoly could be broken by leveraging OpenOffice.
None of these mean that they want MS to stop creating Office for the Mac.
One big term that Apple has left out of their business equation is that it takes a critical mass of users to make a platform flourish; it takes a critical mass of users to encourage software companies to write good software.
I’ll bet they never thought of that! I hope they change their strategy of trying to lose marketshare into one that tries to increase it.
Why would any software company want to jump on the Mac bandwagon, when the number of users is REALLY small as compared to PC users?
Because Mac users are rich (see the CNet story)? Because they spend a lot on quality software? Because you can earn a lot of money, this goes for both Office and Photoshop, both make a bundle on the Mac.
Hell, even Linux as a platform is growing much more important to Mac OS.
On the desktop? Have you been using drugs?
Maybe it would be a good idea to port Aqua to a Linux Distribution for the Power PC? There would be more pre-compiled software available
Do you know about Darwin? Most Unix software can easily be ported to OS X. Linux-specific software is almost non-existent, BTW. Most of the software people associate with Linux works on BSD or Solaris just as well. This makes sense since Linux tries to be Unix-compliant.
Maybe it would be a good idea to port Aqua to a Linux Distribution for the Power PC?
Why? Apart from the fact that it is technically infeasible (Aqua is strongly tied to the lower layers of OS X), I don’t see what Apple has to gain by helping people on competing OS’s. It seems to me that Apple would like you to use OS X, not LinuxPPC.
And why is not Apple helping out with projects like Wine, that can run Windows in a Unix environment?
Because it requires a x86-processor?
Sounds like a few easy ways to get more users, something that Apple definitely needs to maintain a critical mass…
Except that Apple’s marketshare is growing with their current strategy, they are doing well financially and converting Unix-adepts into OS X-users is going fine. What they really seem to lack is the ability to convert OS 9 and Windows users to OS X and getting people to upgrade. They seem to be adressing the first with Jaguar and the new Switch campaign. I hope they will introduce a new, advanced PowerMac soon to address the second problem.
call microsoft for what it is and in dano’s mind you instantly become a “hater”!
as much as you, dano, are willing to endure the “good” stuff that is microsoft, so am i and many other realists who much rather willingly put up with the “bad” (non-microsoft) stuff because we are sick and tired of feeding the bully beast from redmond.
get real.
The postings about what the consumer does is irrelevent. MicroSoft
for all of their market dominance, make their money from the Corporate
World(tm). Without naming names, most owners of MS Office have pirate
or pre-installed versions. Companies are resistant to change, thus
why even Mac based companies are a little resistant to upgrade to the
new Macs.
WinXP is not as much of a jump for MS’s corporate customers, as
they’ve almost all were using NT in the firstplace. Thus, it was more
of an upgrade than shifting platforms.
Finally, I’ll have to admit that I don’t care one iota about either
Apple or MicroSoft. I’m an Amiga faithful 😉 Then again, I make my
pay from COBOL on old SCO boxes… Well, we’ve all got to eat!
Groceries2k2, upgrade to our new PaperSackOS !-)
Targhan
>>It is really a shame that many people on here don’t care or are wishing that Microsoft stops production of Office for Mac OS X.
>>Did I read a different thread? I really can’t remember many people who asked for that. Most people either bitched about the price, about the monopoly that Office has (in general, not just on the Mac) or about the lack of new features. Some hoped that the monopoly could be broken by leveraging OpenOffice.
A few posts were wishing this.
>>One big term that Apple has left out of their business equation is that it takes a critical mass of users to make a platform flourish; it takes a critical mass of users to encourage software companies to write good software.
>>I’ll bet they never thought of that! I hope they change their strategy of trying to lose marketshare into one that tries to increase it.
You are right.
>>Why would any software company want to jump on the Mac bandwagon, when the number of users is REALLY small as compared to PC users?
>>Because Mac users are rich (see the CNet story)? Because they spend a lot on quality software? Because you can earn a lot of money, this goes for both Office and Photoshop, both make a bundle on the Mac.
There are even more Windows users that are rich.
>>Hell, even Linux as a platform is growing much more important to Mac OS.
>>On the desktop? Have you been using drugs?
I did not say the desktop. Linux is growing in other ways.
>>Maybe it would be a good idea to port Aqua to a Linux Distribution for the Power PC? There would be more pre-compiled software available
>>Do you know about Darwin? Most Unix software can easily be ported to OS X. Linux-specific software is almost non-existent, BTW. Most of the software people associate with Linux works on BSD or Solaris just as well. This makes sense since Linux tries to be Unix-compliant.
I know all about Darwin…I said “Pre-Compiled”
>>Maybe it would be a good idea to port Aqua to a Linux Distribution for the Power PC?
>>Why? Apart from the fact that it is technically infeasible (Aqua is strongly tied to the lower layers of OS X), I don’t see what Apple has to gain by helping people on competing OS’s. It seems to me that Apple would like you to use OS X, not LinuxPPC.
Bullshit, this could be implemented on other Unix platforms. Its running on Mach now.
>>And why is not Apple helping out with projects like Wine, that can run Windows in a Unix environment?
Because it requires a x86-processor?
This is not a problem if Apple smartens up and uses AMD or other x86 processors. They are going to leave the PowerPC in the dust just because of competition.
>>Sounds like a few easy ways to get more users, something that Apple definitely needs to maintain a critical mass…
>>Except that Apple’s marketshare is growing with their current strategy, they are doing well financially and converting Unix-adepts into OS X-users is going fine. What they really seem to lack is the ability to convert OS 9 and Windows users to OS X and getting people to upgrade. They seem to be adressing the first with Jaguar and the new Switch campaign. I hope they will introduce a new, advanced PowerMac soon to address the second problem.
Since when? Macs share is pathetic. When you are on the bottom in marketshare there is no where to go but up.
Dano.
There are even more Windows users that are rich.
True, but there is enough money in the Mac-market to sustain some damn fine apps. If you add the Unix software that you can use and Virtual PC, the lack of software isn’t really that big a problem. In fact, there is some damn fine Mac-only software. I’ve been able to get my nephews to ask their parents for a Mac after a visit by showing them a Mac-only game.
I know all about Darwin…I said “Pre-Compiled”
Then just download Fink. If you are smart enough to use the command line, you are smart enough to figure that one out.
Bullshit, this could be implemented on other Unix platforms. Its running on Mach now.
And probably uses Mach-specific calls and is tuned to that particular kernel. Trust me, it’s a lot more work than just swapping in another kernel. Even just the extra testing costs a bundle. And for what gain? I still don’t understand how this will help Apple.
This is not a problem if Apple smartens up and uses AMD or other x86 processors. They are going to leave the PowerPC in the dust just because of competition.
Perhaps. Or we might see a next generation PowerPC from IBM that is fully competitive. In any case, moving to x86 is going to cause an immense amount of problems. It’s not something that can be done lightly. Especially when there is the risk that people start running OS X on generic hardware (which isn’t easy to prevent).
Besides, you also ignore the problem that a very good emulator creates the risk that developers stop creating Mac-specific software at all, since they can reach Mac-users with Windows-software. That would be disastrous.
Since when? Macs share is pathetic. When you are on the bottom in marketshare there is no where to go but up.
It’s enough to make Apple profitable and to have a fair amount of software available. I believe that Apple’s strategy is excellent in a market where the desire for performance is giving away to a demand for more user friendly designs. They are creating a great package deal. You get some great software for free with your Mac. It works great with your digital camera, your DV camcorder, an iPod and your CD and DVD players (when you burn your own mixes or video’s). And the great software and few problems make you work faster. Even if your software is 20% slower (some is faster, some is slower on the Mac), you may still get your work done faster. As a CS-student, I know of quite a few fellow students that have immense problems with their Windows machine (losing documents and/or days of productivity). Given the fact that some of these computer literate people have substantial problems, I can only guess what problems more average users must have.
MacOS X may be a solution to their troubles, although in the past, most people had trouble looking past the Mhz’s. Fortunately, more and more people are looking for alternatives to Windows and are moving beyond these fairly meaningless comparisons. It’s a sign of a maturing market, how many people still pick their car based solely on horsepower?
>>There are even more Windows users that are rich.
>>True, but there is enough money in the Mac-market to sustain some damn fine apps. If you add the Unix software that you can use and Virtual PC, the lack of software isn’t really that big a problem. In fact, there is some damn fine Mac-only software. I’ve been able to get my nephews to ask their parents for a Mac after a visit by showing them a Mac-only game.
What? And where are all those OS X apps? Where is Adobe in all of this? Have they even ported most of their software to OS X? Nope. Games? The PC is way ahead in that department, and you are not going to even attempt to run a game in Virtual PC…I don’t think that your nephews wanting to play a cool game you showed them illustrates that there is a plethora of good Mac software.
>>This is not a problem if Apple smartens up and uses AMD or other x86 processors. They are going to leave the PowerPC in the dust just because of competition.
>>Perhaps. Or we might see a next generation PowerPC from IBM that is fully competitive. In any case, moving to x86 is going to cause an immense amount of problems. It’s not something that can be done lightly. Especially when there is the risk that people start running OS X on generic hardware (which isn’t easy to prevent).
Dude, the PowerPC processors are going to trudge along in the PC market just like Apple. They are going to be around but not widely used. Even IBM has a Free motherboard design for the PowerPC that no-one is really taking advantage of. If Apple did switch to the x86 hardware, they would not only do themselves a favor, benefiting from the competition and lower costs/power ratio, but they would also be able to compare their machines on an equal MHz footing and ride on the advertizing provided by the CPU manufacturers. Does’nt this make some sense?
>>Besides, you also ignore the problem that a very good emulator creates the risk that developers stop creating Mac-specific software at all, since they can reach Mac-users with Windows-software. That would be disastrous.
This is definitely true, as it happened to OS/2 many many many years ago.
>>Since when? Macs share is pathetic. When you are on the bottom in marketshare there is no where to go but up.
It’s enough to make Apple profitable and to have a fair amount of software available. I believe that Apple’s strategy is excellent in a market where the desire for performance is giving away to a demand for more user friendly designs.
I don’t believe that this is true among most users. Are you saying that Apples really are not as powerful as PCs?
>>They are creating a great package deal. You get some great software for free with your Mac. It works great with your digital camera, your DV camcorder, an iPod and your CD and DVD players (when you burn your own mixes or video’s).
This software comes with the PC when you buy pieces of hardware. Apple people keep talking about iTunes and the video editing software, but the adverage user is not going to use this crap. Its a feature without a benefit. How about preloading MS-Office, now that would be a benefit.
>>And the great software and few problems make you work faster. Even if your software is 20% slower (some is faster, some is slower on the Mac), you may still get your work done faster. As a CS-student, I know of quite a few fellow students that have immense problems with their Windows machine (losing documents and/or days of productivity). Given the fact that some of these computer literate people have substantial problems, I can only guess what problems more average users must have.
That is because when they bought their hardware, they were not considering real reliability. Many PC problems are brought about using cheap hardware with crumby drivers. This may not happen with Macs because of Apple’s proprietary designs, but at least with a PC there is a wide range of choice in hardware.
>>MacOS X may be a solution to their troubles, although in the past, most people had trouble looking past the Mhz’s. Fortunately, more and more people are looking for alternatives to Windows and are moving beyond these fairly meaningless comparisons. It’s a sign of a maturing market, how many people still pick their car based solely on horsepower?
Dude, in computers reliability AND speed can go together. There are many other computers, including PCs that can provide both. I have seen alot of Mac software from other venders that has not been that hot, especially OS9 software.
Dano