Comments on: Are We Looking At An Apple Future?

By: The Personal Blog of Jason Dunn » Blog Archive » Apple Thoughts Now Live

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:20:13 +0000

[...] in the market. Earlier this year, 40% of all notebooks sold at retail over $1000 USD were Macbooks, and who can forget this picture? The iPhone? Game-changing. Not the right phone everyone, and definitely over-hyped, but it changed [...]

By: Spot the non-Apple user in this picture at hanimorsi.com

Spot the non-Apple user in this picture at hanimorsi.com — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:25:19 +0000

[...] The picture was taken in the Missouri School of Journalism. Picture source via via [...]

By: The Picture Says It All… at Gear Diary

The Picture Says It All… at Gear Diary — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 04:05:37 +0000

[...] Dunn posted this picture on his blog this morning (sourced from here) and it just goes to show how popular Macs have become (and what [...]

By: chrisgohlke

chrisgohlke — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:15:05 +0000

Back in my day we used pen and paper to take notes in class. And if we wanted a distraction during class, we did crossword puzzles which were at least educational. Now you whippersnappers just surf the net when you are bored in class.

By: Janak Parekh

Janak Parekh — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:49:17 +0000

Oh, and one other thing: the above pic is highly unusual, even today.

By: Janak Parekh

Janak Parekh — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:48:24 +0000

Jason, couple points in response:

1. What does it mean to be a “Windows guy”? I call myself a “computer guy”, not a “Windows guy”. I use different OSes daily in getting my work done. It’s all about using the right tool.

2. Apple is not an OS company. They happen to be a hardware company that makes an OS to sell their hardware. Apple revoked the licenses because the company was in danger of going bankrupt. Call it predatory if you like, but it was really their only choice at the time.

3. Your ruthless comparison is… comparing (sorry for the pun) apples and oranges. I’ve said it before, and I truly believe it: Apple seeks to control their product, while Microsoft seeks to control the market. Both are kinds of lock-in at different levels. You don’t want to live in an Apple world, fine. But you do live in a Microsoft world, one that would be surprisingly hard to break out of.

By: Jason Dunn

Jason Dunn — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:55:15 +0000

An interesting thought! But do you remember when Apple licensed their OS to clone vendors in the ’90s? Apple thought that most people would still prefer the Apple hardware….and Apple hardware sales tanked because people cared more about saving money than about how their systems looked. Apple revoked the licensing agreements (or didn’t renew them, same thing) and all those companies went kaput. It’s the most brutal, predatory thing an OS company could do – and Apple did it. But that’s Apple: they’re 200% more ruthless and brutal than Microsoft ever was on their worst day. One of many reasons why I don’t want to live in an Apple world…

By: tre4bax

tre4bax — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:32:54 +0000

This is truely interesting and sobering for microsoft, but if the EU gets a bit twitchy about the bundling of media player in their OS being monopoly, what are they going to do when every other PC manufacturer starts to die. Truth is the above picture won’t expand to everywhere because Apple as the sole provider of IS cannot be tolerated. What could happen though is OS X on all the kit we currently associate with windows, a path made possible by Apples adoption of the intel architecture. All it needs is for them to start selling their OS independant of Kit.

Of course this will expose the OS to the vast plethora of hardware that Windows is expected to just support and this could lead to some support issues. It will also expose the OS to the attentions of the Crackers and malware creators as it becomes the biggest platform for computing…..