Apple to Wintel: It's time to get your affairs in order..
A helpful tip: In most communities, it is a violation of law to put your PC out to the curb. It contains lead, Windows XP, mercury and other toxic substances. After you read this blog entry, find the location of the electronics recycling facility nearest to you.
Another helpful tip: Coming turmoil among tech manufacturer and retailer stocks will not signal broader economic trouble. PC manufacturers and resellers will be going through a period of strategic adjustment as their inventories of mainstream professional-grade Windows/Intel desktop setups--box, LCD panel, OS, keyboard, mouse--along with aftermarket accessories for these systems, rise to excessive levels.
A while back, I wrote an InfoWorld column with the title, "Die, die, accursed PC!" It was a glowing tribute to the most enduring example of engineering inertia the world has witnessed. I shall have my wish.
The Wintel PC has been enormously successful, both in generating revenue and in keeping the world's technological expectations tethered to the 20th century. I thought our kids would be laughing at us about how our computers used to have all of these cables and dust-sucking fans, how they got so huge that we had to stand them on their sides and stuff them under our desks, how people had to write their own software to make playing a movie or a song easier than balancing their checkbooks, and how these boxes buckled and reverberated when you tapped on their tin can cases. "Won't you tell us, O ancient one, about how Windows used to force you to prove you had permission to use it, even though you just received it pre-installed on a shrink-wrapped computer? Is it true that people moved furniture and crawled around on the floor for a day or two after they got their new computers? And did you really spend weeks accumulating the basic software you needed and setting up a livable working environment?"
Hah! We're spared from having to pass the embarrassing story of willingly wasting away in the technological trailer park along to the whippersnappers. You can say you were there back in ought-six when 64-bit Macs knocked the bottom out of the Wintel PC client market. A lot of people were scared, kid, but Dell gave us that $100 PC we wanted and Microsoft open-sourced big hunks of Windows.
PC vendors will not be able to move any ready-to-run Wintel desktop costing more than $1,000. In other words, Dell, Lenovo, HP and whomever else (I don't track the consumer PC market) that isn't catering directly to the high-end gaming and workstation markets is going to have a horrendously lousy Christmas, and dust silhouettes in the shape of boxy PCs will pop up like desktop crop circles.
It often happens that what I write about with sarcasm and playful hyperbole comes to pass. I'll have more to say about iMac and the walk from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo; I'm past deadline on the Mac cover package (which now needs some updating). But Mac Pro and 64-bit iMacs, and soon, 64-bit MacBook Pro and Xserve, will create mayhem in the PC market because Microsoft and Intel PC makers never staffed or strategized for user-focused innovation. Microsoft will follow along as best it can now that it realizes that Apple reflects and drives computer users' desires. It understands that Apple is a far bigger threat than Linux, which it is prepared to battle.
Mark my words: All savvy users want bulletproof, manufacturer-supported commercial hardware in their server rooms, at work, at home and in their carry-on bags. By year's end, Apple will have mind share leadership in all markets but servers. Its market share climb in '07 will dumbfound almost everyone but you and me.
[Enterprise Mac]
12:49:46 AM 
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