I don't usually get religious about operating systems and platforms. Computers are tools and sometimes you need certain tools for certain jobs. It may be a Windows PC or a Mac or Linux box or AS400 or a Sparc Staion or whatever - pick the tool for the job and be done with it.
But the recent Apple commercials showing a person who "switched" from a Windows PC to a Mac are jokes. (Do you really need hours to downlaod a driver for a modern digital camera? That's bull!) There are plenty of thorough dissections of the idiocy of the ads by others but I have always had one main problem with Apple - and they are doing it again (still)
Steve Wozniak was a brilliant engineer and technicain. Steve Jobs (and Guy Kawasaki et al) are brilliant marketers. Unfortunately, the marketing side won out over the technical side.
Jobs always positioned Apple as the "computer for the rest of us" and made it sound like it was for the common man. In reality, Apple was always much higher priced than the PC so it was usually out of the price range of the common man.
In addition Apple would not let any 3rd parties into its closed system so you had to buy software, peripherals and upgrades just from Apple - this kept the price high and the quality not as robust as it could have been with thousands of developers (as in the Windows world)
The "common man" could easily shop for add-ons, software and updates from hundreds of competing companies in the PC world. Apple clone is essentialy an oxymoron.
If Jobs had had less of an ego and opened up the Mac world they would have significant market share instead of the paltry 5% that they have had for years.
1:33:58 PM 
|
