
How Apple can gain significant OS market share - ryanwaggoner
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/opinion-apple-os-marketshare.ars
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mechanical_fish
What is there to say about this that Gruber hasn't already said?

From <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/08/31/reisinger>

_It doesn’t matter how well Apple is doing, how remarkably profitable the Mac
has become, how remarkably fast Mac sales are growing — the idea that Apple
“must” or “should” license Mac OS X to other computer makers will never die._

~~~
gojomo
There was another time Apple was "remarkably profitable" and had an even
higher market share than it does now -- the early 90s -- and they somehow lost
that position. And the strategy that drove Apple to the margins -- and that
built the largest financial success of the PC era -- was Mirosoft's broad
licensing.

Then again, Apple tried a form of licensing their OS to clonemakers in the
late 90s, and did not get the hoped-for benefits at that time.

So it's more complicated than Gruber's simplistic "Apple doing great right now
-- licensing silly" sentiment. Different eras require different strategies,
and Apple may yet hit (or already be at the point) where the winning move is
to put MacOS on others' hardware.

I suspect if Jobs announced a licensing program tomorrow, we would hear from
Gruber how brilliant of an idea it is.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Sure, different eras require different strategies. That's what makes this
argument so funny: It's hopelessly mired in a bygone era. They're debating the
best move in a game that Apple stopped playing two or three _games_ ago.

Apple doesn't care much about desktop marketshare. That game is old. They care
about desktop hardware _profits_ , which are doing nicely -- they've got one
of the most profitable segments of that market sewn up, and it's a nice cash
cow. And they care about _control_ , the control that enables them to
coordinate their hardware and software better than anyone else in the
industry, and to ensure that any new thing they bring out (like the iPhone)
fits seamlessly into at least one major operating system in its first month of
release.

But the focus has long since moved off the desktop OS. First it moved to the
music hardware and content business, but by now even that has arguably become
a cash cow -- Apple owns the most profitable slice of the music hardware
market, and is one of two or three major content players, and they're running
out of music industry to dominate. Growth is slowing. So, having sewn that up,
they're on to game #3: the mobile hardware industry, with side plays in the
"Web OS" business (Safari and iTunes run on Windows -- that's just about the
only "Apple on PC hardware" play that the company cares about) and some latent
TV and movie stuff that is seemingly waiting for a chance to break out.

These days Apple thinks about Google and Nokia and RIM and Amazon and the
cable companies. Microsoft is not much of a player in the games that Apple
plays today. Let them keep their big fat Windows marketshare. It's not making
them any more nimble.

------
SwellJoe
Sorry, this dudes just a blowhard. I just read his "Can Blockbuster be Saved"
article, as well, and it's just painful how far behind the curve Reisinger's
opinions are.

It's just not very interesting to see someone who is less informed than me on
these topics (and that is truly uninformed, because I couldn't care very much
less about Apple or Blockbuster) spewing random opinions.

------
ryanbooker
It's a surprising article from Ars. Apple is a massively successful and
profitable company. They don't need to commoditise OSX. They're not trying to
compete on market share. They're trying make money by making better computers.
Something they are doing very well thank you very much.

~~~
Hutzpah
Thanks for understanding the problem space. Just one addition: the Mac
competes in some markets for market share. Just not for overall PCish OS
installations world wide.

------
chaostheory
From a technical standpoint Apple were to do this again, it would impact OS
X's reliability - having to deal with an infinite number of hardware
combinations as opposed to a select limited few is not easy...

From a financial standpoint, hasn't this already happened before? If I
remember correctly, it didn't do wonders for the company's bottom line nor did
it do much to make inroads vs. Windows marketwise.

The way things are now, Apple is making good market share gains vs. MS and it
doesn't have to worry much about software piracy either.

~~~
dconti
Totally agree. There is a huge cost to supporting hardware combinations and a
huge perception problem that it generates (what if mac osx takes 3 seconds
longer to resume on a given hardware platform? what impact does that have on
their image?)

Also what about the software maintenance costs? Right now Apple has all sorts
of shortcuts they can take with servicing because they have < 15% share, low
penetration in enterprise, etc. The costs on that will go way up if their
share increases dramatically.

I think the problem with articles like this is they come from this altruistic
"osx seems nice so it should be everywhere" idea. This is exactly the idea
that has made life hard for windows - that it _must_ support a huge software
and hardware ecosystem, and it _must_ work everywhere, and MS must pay the
costs associated with that.

And at the end of the day MS makes less money per PC sold than Apple makes per
Mac.

------
mixmax
_If the company wants to capture significant market share from Microsoft and
see Mac OS X become more ubiquitous, it needs to stray from its comfort zone
and start making more innovative decisions._

GUI(1), mouse(1), air, ipod, iphone, dock, linuxbased - need I say more about
Apple innovation?

I wouldn't take stock recommendations from this guy.

(1) Yeah I know it was originally developed at Xerox Parc, but Steve Jobs was
the one that managed to get it into a real product.

~~~
jauco
First of two small corrections:

* The 'parc' (Xerox's computer, with mouse and GUI) _was_ built and shipped and actively used, just never sold commercially.

* Apple is BSD-based, not linux based. being BSD-based is most certainly not innovative ;-)

Most of the 'innovations' you mention are rather successful implementations of
existing technologies. Apple ships good products but none of the ones you
mention solve an entirely new use-case, like the mouse did, or the photo-
copier, or the walkman. First you weren't able to listen to your music while
walking on the street or commuting in the subway, then suddenly you were.

~~~
DabAsteroid
_Apple is BSD-based, not linux based. being BSD-based is most certainly not
innovative_

<http://www.google.com/search?q=apple+osx+nextstep>

"It would be an understatement to say that OS X is derived from NEXTSTEP and
OPENSTEP. In many respects, it's not just similar, it's the _same_.

~~~
jauco

      If you like open source development, you'll love Mac OS X. This fully-conformant 
      UNIX operating system—built on Mach 3.0 and FreeBSD 5

\--<http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html>

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