Apple Matters

This is a rather simplistic article on why Microsoft's party is coming to an end. The author has listed out three "nails" that are going to take down the company.

<Nail 1> Shoddy software practices are forced on programmers due to incompetent managers which in turn produces the mess that is Longhorn. <my response> I think the whole software world is suffering from shoddy software programming because the programmers are doing a shoddy job through out the industry. The programmers and testers at Microsoft are probably no different or no smarter than the ones outside. And programmers who want to do a better job simply can't because its not practical to rewrite thousands of lines of code just because the design is bad. Try justifying to a manager that a working product needs to be reimplemented because its design does'nt look good in UML and you'll know what I mean.

And what makes you think that badly written code has not been in Mac OS X? Just because it looks good? </my response> </Nail 1>

<Nail 2> <snip 1> Steve Jobs. He has Apple humming like fine tuned violin. Tiger is everything Apple promised </snip 1> <snip 2> Apple is going to squeeze out yet another OS before Microsoft can get Longhorn out the door. </snip 2> <snip 3> Then you have this whole Macintel thing going on plus rumors about the iPod/ITMS/movie business all of which draw the attention of the media towards Apple’s successes. </snip 3> <my response> In principle, I agree with what the write has to say about Apple's successes. But I think a lot of it has to do with the media's attention to Apple and it's activities. Apple has always been this quirky, anti-establishment, unconventional company. Its different from the Dells, HPs and Microsofts and very different from the IBMs of the world. Plus, its penchant for secrecy has always fascinated, and people are naturally curious as to what is happening at Apple. Microsoft on the other hand has always open about itself. Evidence: Microsoft's encouragement to its corporate bloggers. I've yet to see a blogger who openly identifies themselves as an Apple employee and writes about it too. Microsoft encourages its employees to blog and its a sign of its maturity that employee can talk about themselves and their employer so openly. Some of them sometimes go over the top about like this one, but in this particular case, I think that has something to do with his job. (Click on the link and scroll down to find his job description).

Positive media attention is factor in Apple's ability to wow. Microsoft does'nt get that simply because everyone wants some one to blame, even when its their own fault. </my response> </Nail 2>

<Nail 3> Linux <my response> As much as I like Linux, I've yet to see how someone can make money of it. And no providing support for it does'nt count. The GPL code is so expansive, that it practically forces a professional development company to publicize its code and in a competitive business enviroment that just does'nt make sense. Peronally, I think Linux is best for students and researchers to try out new ideas and then let companies Microsoft to implement those innovations in their products. In my opinion, the GPL needs to be revised so that people have more flexibility. One way could be to use the license that Qt operates under. </my response> </Nail 3>

<Nail 4> Mindshare <my response> The author defines mindshare as "the extent to which people know about a phenomenon". As unfortunate as it is, mindshare is'nt what gets applications developed for OS'es. Its the C#, Java, HTML, ASP and script programmers who actually develop applications, and if Apple does'nt have any of that mindshare, then the mindshare of people who own iPods, buy music from iTunes and rave about MacOS X really does'nt count. Secondly, the money comes from corporate customers and while consumers appreciate the bells and whistles in a OS and how "cool" something looks, corporate customers are just not going to be buy stuff just because it looks good. My employer is still using Windows 2000 as the corporate desktop, because it just works for everything they need. That's why they have'nt shifted to Windows XP, and they won't until they absolutely have to. Microsoft knows that its money comes from corporate customers and it does'nt have the luxury that that Apple has in saying to customers that "we're transitioning and you better cough up the money to buy new stuff, and if you can't do that, well tough. " </my response> </Nail 4>

<Nail 5> Games <my response> I'm not sure how this is going to be a cause in Microsoft's demise. In my opinion, Microsoft has done a pretty good job in creating a gaming platform for Windows, ala DirectX. The only thing that I don't like about DirectX was the COM programming model that is used to expose functionality. I've never been a fan of COM, and I always thought it was just too cumbersome to use. But it is possible to roll and decent framework, and wrap those COM interfaces, and you can build some pretty decent games. Not to mention that the DirectX games can be easily be made using the standard tools that Microsoft provides (Visual Studio). In theory that means that something that runs on a PC, runs on an XBox. XBox is a pretty decent console and I think the new console is definitely going to help Microsoft retain customers that might gravitate to alternatives like a Mac. Contrast this with Sony's console. Yes its got the largest games, but I'm pretty sure that people out there are working on porting the large variety of games for the PC to the XBox. Personally, I can't wait for the XBox 360 to come out. </my response> </Nail 5>

Thats about it for my thoughts on the subject. Read another rebuttal here.