jbelkin's Profile

The bottom line is that 85% of the people buying PC's buy it on price alone because to them a personal computer (any OS) is not worth more than $499, $399 or $299 - to them, it's not IMPORTANT enough to spend more. Many of us would disagree here but to them, it's like buying curtains or a bookcase ... there are people who spent $5k on curtains and $10k on carpets but $499 on a computer because it's just not that important to them so Chris is right, people claim they want a "cheap" Mac and they have one - a Mini but for the most part, who does it bring to the table? Either Mac users or feel they don't really need that much power and prefer to choose their own monitor or a few PC users but if you go to an Apple store, most Pc users who decide to go mac either buy a laptop or an imac ... people who buy macs value VALUE ... just as a Kia can outcorner a BMW in a specific test and costs way less than a BMW but what % of BMW buyers buy a Kia? Or conversely all the people who claim that PC pricing is the only criteria but would never buy a car that way? The facts are that people calim they want a cheaper mac but the mac buying audience ultimately decides they'd rather spend an extra few hundred dollars from a mini + monitor to an imac or to a macbook ... that is why Apple's US share of $1k retail sales is 66% ... people who really want a computer and not just to have a thing on their desk choose Macs ... or conversely, WIN PC's have fallen from 98% to 34% in 7 years in the $1k category ... (and of course, clearly, the growth of $1k is faster as Apple is crusin at 35% growth EVERY year while Win PC's are increasing at %5 growth ...)

PC users find this hard to believe but each Mac OS actually makes your older machine faster - I know you think this is a lie as PC users who try and install even XP2 over XP find it's not worth the bother - just buy a new machine while I have a laptop I mostly just used to surf while watching TV or for when guests are at the house, I've upgraded from 10.2 to 10.4 and damn if the thing isn't actually faster ... I know Pc users will find it hard to believe but it's true - one reason why Macs hold up their value.

I have to say this is a pretty strange analysis - there's no real way to disprove your hypothesis but I believe Adobe wished the Mac would've just hone away so they could concentrate their resources just on the WIN market. In the beginning, of course, there was no real long term plan, no one knew exactly what going to happen with the personal computing market especially with graphics. It was a very niche market, a true color computer with mostly true color monitor cost anywhere from $6 to $10k (today's inflation dollars - $10k-$18k) - sure, you could run PS on a b&w mac (or PC) and that was nice and all that and very, very cool (PS 1.0 was like the Mac - the world was suddenly different) but unless you had access to a $6k laser printer, it's like creating art on an etch a sketch ... Until the early 1990's, it was a given that "creative" depts had macs and everyone else eventullay got PC's and you could actually argue that when PS got released on WIndows, it negated the reason for many companies to keep Macs. PS was really one of the few undisputed irreplacable apps. Now, keep in mind, most of the PC versions oF PS were crap until maybe release 4.0 many years alter but the purchasing dept or IT doesn't care about usability. Hey, if PS is avaialble on a PC and they absolutely need PS, great - on the next buying cycle, let's get rid of the Mac and this continued until the late 1990's. Adobe even did their part either through cheapness, laziness or actively trying to kill the Mac - hard to say for 100% certainty because you could argue all three. Macs did a major transition from OS6 to OS 7, ADobe was a year late in moving and when Macs went from OS9 to OSX, again, it took Adobe 18 months to finally release an OSX version and it wasn't true OSX and now from PPC to Intel, again, Adobe is the LAST major app to complete the transition. Maybe it's just because they are cheap & lazy, but you see the pattern? THey got into a dispute with Apple in the 1990's because Adobe wanted Apple to adopt their Postscript as the screen display also but Apple decided not to - since then, Adobe has been frankly, kind of pissy. They basically upgraded Premiere & AF on the PC side but 5 years later, nothing on the Mac side - in fact, iMovie was based on Premiere 3.0 that the developer wanted Adobe to re-do from the ground up but Adobe didn't think it was worth it so they sold it Apple. Same with every app they've sold, upgrade the WIN version, upgrade the Mac version only very reluctantly and slowly (and missing PC features) - maybe it's because they are a cheap company so they hate the fact the Mac side is vocal and the driver of the market where the real pros are so they can't stop developing but they clearly would rather just write Win apps to save them time & money. At least with MS, you can understand when they play games (like the new DOCX) format won't be true mac compatible until next year but Adobe? If anything, they are morons. THey have pissed off Apple AND MS (sued MS for including PDF creation). Not exactly really smart. Maybe that's why they want to develop Flash as the web language (and of course, Apple digs in deeper by ignoring Flash for the iphone) - after all these years, they still struggle from quarter to quarter and when others are lowering the price of software, they try and sell everything for $800, once, 10% of the price of a PC but now 100-50% of a personal computer. THey don't seem to get it's 2007, hell, they still think it's 1995.

You're right it's pointless to rehash old history but the main difference is that MS is a CONVICTED monopolist. There's nothing wrong with being dominant (like the ipod), having a large marlet share is not in itself illegal - it's when you leverage that monopoly to make other gains. That is the main difference between MS & Apple. One's been convicted by dozens of countries and states of committing illegal acts.

You're right about SJ being stubborn and why MS did what they did but they are working a game plan from 1992 and it won't work here. Even Morris in his last comments says it's an experiment and it'd be nice to continue it - knowing full well SJ is not going to go for it. a) Apple could start by pointing out that what's next, why not car manufacturers charge you for gassing up every time or fridge makers everytime you open the door? What else are you using their thing for? b) Clearly with the lower than calculated sale for ipod for online tracks, it's PROVEN that consumers already know how to load non AAC Fairplay tracks on their ipod so what would a Universal pullout achieve? NOTHING. Consumers would continue to DL illegally or buy CD's. Unless Universal is prepared to stop selling CD's in the stores at the same, their bluff is NOTHING. c) Who is going to win this PR battle? Universal? the Music Industry? Or the other side? SJ, Apple, musicians and the music consumer? d) Steve Jobs heads Apple, Pixar and sits on the board of Disney - who is going to piss off SJ and who plans on staying in the entertainment industry? MS cannot seem this because they think it's 1992 and they can implement their embrace & extend game plan - only in this case, Apple is 100 times more because Apple has deliver some $300 million to Universal (guessing at their $1 cut for selling about 25% of all the itunes tracks sold so far) so Universal might talk big to the press, the reality is they are not walking away from that versus MS's ONE MILLION dollar deal (what MS just announced they'll by June 2007 - talk about low expectations ... Apple should be crossing the 120 million ipod by then)

Honestly, 90% of the people who are really interested in running OSX on their PC are either hackers or people who insist on building thir own white box - just because they enjoy fiddling with it everyday and every week - swapping something out in the "name of making it the best" but in reality, like a kit car - a hodgepodge of technology and frankly, crap. It would be easier just to go out and buy a Mustang 500 for the amount of money they are spending. If anything, offering a Mac OSX legally would bore them - they'd must rather have it as it now - try to hack their system so it runs ... let them just buy a box of OSX off the shel;f but you can NEVER please this crowd with a legal product. As for the rest of the interested people, Mac already licenses the OSX, it's called a MINI. For $600, you get OSX plus iLife and NO viruses ... even if you count XP as the equal to OSX, ilife is available nowhere else for thousands of dollars PLUS you get free walk-in tech support and hundreds of stores who will not tell you to call the MS or vice versa, it's a hardware issue. And that leads to the final reason - how much would you have to price OSX to cover all the add'l tech support (look at all the whining over the FREE PC itunes?) and port ilife also? $499? $599? Hey, look, it's the price of a MINI - again, for pretty much the same price, Apple can deliver you the full Mac experience without the need to set up tech support. Collolary to that is when Pc users walk into a store and see OSX at retail at $499 or $599, they think - man, that's one expensive OS - the hardware must be expensive - it's a bad sitiuation all around. Other than the hackers and pirates who want to run a free OS, the average person does not really know or care that much anymore - you ask them to identify what's Windows and what the browser - how many people will get that right? 30% Apple is doing it right now - build buzz and provide an easy in - the mini. You keep the keyboard, mouse & monitor you like, plug us in and try it out ...

PC users I think for the most part also do not believe us mac users who claim we have not seen a virus, trojan or malware in 5 YEARS (highjack your search bar? What does that mean?*) We might as well be telling them we rode on the back on the Loch Ness monster for an hour in that Scottish lake ... They just cannot convieve it and think we all got together as part of some mass conspiracy. * My friend's PC had 20 searchbars and 200+ items deemed as spyware after I helped him install a spyware checker ... and of course, this app he used insisted on using IE but as soon as IE launched, another 37 windows would pop up and pop under.