Jobs has been on a long term plan since he came back to Apple. He wants nothing more than to dominate Microsoft. Anyone who ignores this fact is not seeing the whole picture. People forget that Jobs is just like anyone. His company was number 1, and was almost crushed to death by Microsoft. Since that time he has planed his way back to the top. There is no way Apple could possibly gut their hardware operations in a few months, or years. In order for Apple to survive it needed to have a long term strategic plan that would allow them to continue with their hardware sales until their OS platform was powerful enough to compete with Microsoft.
Lets run through my thoughts on how and why this will happen:
Apple switched to the Intel Processor. This could not have been done years ago when OSX was first released. The company was in a bad position and needed to get strength and market share back before making any major change. Why was the timing perfect? Right now developers across the world are just starting to weigh their 64 bit plans. Many projects will need to be rewritten, and revisited. During this time it will leave a window of opportunity for these developers to start looking towards the Apple environment. Microsoft has helped with their Vista delays, and the 20MB runtimes they require for developing in .NET
Now that Apple is on the Intel platform, drivers for it will be much easier to develop. I predict within the next 2 years nearly 99% hardware such as video cards, sound cards, cameras, etc will have OSX drivers - even those $10 network cards that are in a white box.
Apple will wait. Wait until the time is exactly right. They need to wait until enough components have drivers for the OSX platform - the second biggest hurdle for OS acceptance. The #1 reason for OS acceptance is applications. This is almost a non issue right now. When the time is right we will see a big announcement - either Apple purchases Dell Computer, or Dell computer to install OSX on its PCs.
Lets talk about Apple and open source. Apple could not care less about open source. They only use it to further their goals. This is why I have to laugh when I see people suggesting that Apple might ship Linux with their boxes - never going to happen. Why? This is because if you want to run Unix, then you should run the best Unix there is - OSX.
Steve Jobs is not interested in having a niche product. Nope. Sorry to all those smug Mac owners that think they are in some special club. Steve Jobs wants nothing more than to be the richest man in the world. In my mind he is like Bill Gates on steroids. He is an ambitious man. He wants Apple to be #1. No not #2.
He is so good at brainwashing the tech community. Here is an excerpt of some posts on Slashdot about my argument that he wants world domination:
by Golias (176380): Jobs doesn't want to dominate. He's a kooky hippie who managed to strike it rich, not an aspiring Bill Gates or Larry Ellison. He wants his *vision* to dominate. By that metric, he's already won.
Moby(771358): I don't think Jobs wants to dominate.
Apple has very carefully created a boutique quality to their products. This was a calculated move. To strive for dominance would bring much of the hip-and-cool aspects of Mac culture to an end
This was just a small selection of much of the same. The clouds of smug from these posts are getting so thick I think I need my gas mask. I guess most people take their history from the Pirates of Silicon valley, and forget that Steve Jobs took shares away from employees, and his partner Steve Wozniak gave part of his to these people to make up the difference.
Finally - why does this matter to us? We just normally write about our software, or tricks and tips. It matters because if Apple is going to be this big, we need to start developing for their platform. We have not started yet, but we are starting to look in their direction. I feel within the next year we will.
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Sunday, June 25, 2006
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