And if it started eating into Apples sales it only means Apple isn't offering the customers what they want
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Apple doesn't care about Mac Pro Users
- Thread starter Mactrunk
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It did eat into their sales which is why they stopped offering Mac OSX to third party venders. It does not make sense for Apple which offers premium products to compete with budget brands that would be a race to the bottom.
This would also have the added advantage that Windows would be properly supported (i.e. no need for bootcamp and its problems).
Just because it ate into the sales of a stagnant, non-innovative company that failed at about everything they did doesn't mean it would now.
Pippin, Newton and a ton of other more or less failures talk their own language, the apple of the 90s weren't the same company and was far from in the same situation as it is now. That version of Apple failed for the same reason as Nokia did, not because there were clones...
There's no "need" for boot camp on current macs either, boot camp in OS X is more or less a fancy repartitioning tool and in Windows a driver package... Both of which you would need if you installed two oses on the same computer
I don't think Apples looking to repeat the same mistake during the attack of the clones era. They estimated they lost $500 hardware profit for every $50 licensing fee.
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They wouldn't have if Apple could have been more competitive with their computers. Lost sales only indicate that they couldn't satisfy their customers needs as good as the clone manufacturers
People that still buy clones even though Apple satisfies their needs better wouldn't have bought an apple computer to begin with and is nothing but a virtual loss
quite some time ago they declared themselves a mobile devices company. so its no surprise thats their core focus and it shifted from needing all this storage and power to having everything in the cloud.
the niche comes primarily from businesses, and even then they're not embracing the Mac Pro, some are getting away with other modules or iMacs/macBook Pros
the niche comes primarily from businesses, and even then they're not embracing the Mac Pro, some are getting away with other modules or iMacs/macBook Pros
The key point in his post:
"It doesn't eat into their sales if they let another company make a product they no longer make themselves."
If Apple is no longer making a product the third parties will not be competing with them. Contrast this to the 90's when the third parties were directly competing with Apple. A much different situation.
It will still effect their sales regardless. They still consider the Mac Pro a workstation, PCIe slots or not. Some still shift their production to an iMac, MacBook Pro or even a MacBook Air.
Flash forward to today, they don't need to be as competitive with the PC market. As their Mac sales make more money than many of them combined. Apples not interested in the highly competitive razor thin profit margins of the PC world. Taking an example with Microsoft, they don't make the bulk of their money from operating system sales, but on their productivity software and services.
A virtual loss is still better then an actual higher loss on their hardware sales. That virtual loss is more than made up by a higher profit premium machine.
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It will only affect their sales to people who would have had no choice but to buy the Apple product since there was no alternative. People who buy the nMP because it meets their needs will continue to do so.
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I think to keep coming back to this is a losing argument. The clone experiment was a disaster for numerous reasons that had little to do with the concept of licensing an OS. Apple was getting annihilated in marketshare, the company was a rudderless ship, they were literally headed towards bankruptcy or being bought.
The reasoning is more likely along the lines of: Apple doesn't need to. They have a gazillion dollars, they have a very strong market and product brand that they don't want to mess with, it takes resources they don't want to spare, and there's only a small fraction of the market that can't find a usable Mac from the current product line (whether it's a perfect fit or not). If there's literally something you can't accomplish on a Mac, it's either because they don't make an OS X version of the software, or you're a 2% niche. And Apple doesn't serve 2% niches. There's a very vocal crowd around here who will never get it, but the market for HP tower workstations is getting smaller, and the market for OS X on HP tower workstation hardware is miniscule.
Personally, I see it as a mistake for Apple to abandon the tower workstation market just as I see it as a mistake that they don't offer some sort of xMac. But that's my opinion and I have enough smarts to understand that Apple's vision doesn't include those offerings.
I'm hoping for OS X based servers from IBM now when they have their new closer partnership. Killing of the xserve and making the Mac Pro nothing but a (very) beefed up Mac mini is just Apples way of saying that they aren't in that kind of market anymore. They say they want to carter to the enterprise via their partnership with IBM, but they kill anything that would make up an infrastructure for that very enterprise. Microsoft doesn't offer the hardware required but they offer the software. Apple is primarily a hardware company and so should naturally also offer hardware for the enterprise, as IBM is good at services and software. So, where are the Apple servers, the Apple virtualization systems, the Apple SAN solutions, all of which are required for an enterprise IT system to be "unified". The best solutions are the ones with end-to-end compatibility and where they are more or less made for each other (or everything being completely open and compatible).
Apple and IBM seriously need to push out some grand enterprise solution to be able to compete in that market now when Dell has bought EMC (and thus got vmware, rsa and a bunch of other well known brands). Trust my words, the EMC deal will make Dell a force to be reckoned with when it comes to enterprise networking and services. If Apple are serious about their partnership with IBM to enter the enterprise market, they seriously need to get their **** together and soon...
YES I know that the partnership was primarily for enterprise apps for the iOS platform, but who's to say it's going to stop there or that Apple even wants it to stop there?
And I do know that IBM has a bunch of infrastructure hardware as well, but mostly they tend to be a services/software company nowadays.
What gives you the impression that because Apple makes computer hardware, it should "naturally" also make hardware for enterprise? Again, I can understand that's the wish around here, and you can even make an argument that it would be in Apple's interests, but you're suggesting pie in the sky thinking that in no way resembles the reality of the marketplace. The market you're talking about for an OS X solution is too small.
iOS makes sense because they are selling HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of those devices. For OS X, you're likely talking under a million/year. "Enterprise" has no interest in OS X-based services. Their end users might use MacBooks, etc., but there's no point in building infrastructure on OS X-based hardware.
Their "new" partnership with IBM, explicitly targeted at enterprise apps and solutions.
all successful hardware companies that has a large enterprise presence also has enterprise hardware (dell, hp, cisco and so on). Name one company which is primarily a hardware company who are strong in the enterprise field without having hardware to support the enterprise. Name one Software company save microsoft which is strong in the enterprise field and doesn't have any type of hardware solutions as well.
Apple, as primarily a hardware company, trying to get a foot in the enterprise market (which as said is an explicitly stated reason to partner with IBM), will either need to come up with great open software which is independent on which hardware provider the enterprise has or start churning out hardware to support it.
Yes, the enterprise market for OS X is small, but it won't become any bigger without some effort from Apple (and they, as said, have stated they are interested in the enterprise market).
But Apple isn't primarily a hardware company. It's hardware + software. If it was just about hardware, what's the point of buying Apple? So, which "enterprise" companies are going to set up their software infrastructure on Mac enterprise hardware + OS X? There simply isn't a market for this.
Apple is interested in the enterprise market only from a client/cloud services standpoint. You might have a million servers, but you have a hundred million users. It's the latter market that Apple is interested in.
I just think you're barking up the wrong tree, and I think the market trends backs me up on that. I'll leave it at that.
People who think that we're talking about repeating the "clone wars" model of across Apple's product line competition are also extra-terrestrial.
We're (at least I am) suggesting a model where Apple certifies (and supports) Apple OSX on a few specific models from a single vendor. (I'd put the HP Z-series and the Dell Precisions as candidates.) Hardware options on the Apple-certified models would be a subset of the normal menu - Apple could pick which devices to include O-O-T-B OSX drivers.
Clearly only certifying dual-socket systems eliminates most of the overlap with the MP6,1. I think that it would be nice to see one single socket config - although in theory that overlaps the MP6,1, in practice you'd pick up the people who need more RAM slots or PCIe slots.
Just for clarity ... iPod did not come with Windows OS support from Apple, not initially it was through third party support via a CD for SW installation. When USB was released on the original (not Classic retro-release, the OG) then Apple shipped with support for Windows OS, but that was a year after 3rd party was raking in healthy funds; something Apple loathes and successfully kills out the middle man.
^ To be honest ... after Bertrand left Apple for Scientific Research/Engineering I personally feel OSX Did pretty much die. It's original direction, not affected by XServe poor sales after year 3/4, was scrapt in favor of iOS success leading to OSX beautification and simplistic ease of "App" icon layout by that bushy eye-browed guy (looks creepy to me, but great presenter). OS X is less about bring incredible core Unix/Linux features under the hood now it's not about how sweet and how much like iOS it looks. Windows 10 has unified apps for Desktop/Phone OS ... I actually expected Apple to initiate and perfect this first. But Alas perfection is Apple's game since the old lost Windows lawsuit, not who's on first. My point .... OSX (Snow Leopard was it ... 5-6GB Less installation space, 30%+ performance boost $100 cheaper)! Sure OSX is free the last 3-4yrs but at what real cost?
I've been VERY hesitant the last two years to purchase a quality MBP 13/15" Retina just cause I'd like the best core features over what is fancy like large application icons that take up so much screen real-estate just so it looks like iOS?!??
I agree with everything else you've stated, great timeline too btw.
You're still drinking your own "wouldn't it be nice" kool-aid. There is no machine Apple would ever "certify" to run OS X that isn't made by Apple. This isn't 1986, Apple's entire philosophy is end to end control of the entire product experience. Workstation or not, they aren't about to tarnish their name with a big black box by another manufacturer. They will sooner abandon OS X altogether.
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Yes, it was numerous different things that lead to the problems of Apple. But being annihilated in marketshare also had to do with clone market. Apple does not have a problem with cannibalizing its own products as long as its still another Apple product. But when its a clone taking profits and market share from its own products its a problem.
But clones taking away profits and market share is well documented and did happen. In 1995 Apple sold a record 4.5 million Macs, two years later it was down to 2.8 million.
But it was also about controlling the user experience, something they could not do if they licensed it on another manufactures hardware.
If you're going to continue that narrative, you need to try and make the numbers work. Sales went from 4.5 mil in '95 to 4 mil in '96 to 2.8 in '97. So can you account for 2.2 million in lost Mac sales to the clones (and that's assuming that the Mac clone market didn't include a single customer that would have otherwise bought a PC)?
You're not going to find firm sales data, but the best figures I've found suggest about 675,000 units in the '96 to '97 time frame. Were the clones eating into Apple's sales? Yes. But Mac sales were plummeting regardless of Mac clones... and this is in an era when overall PC sales were exploding (Windows 95 + internet).
My point is not whether the '90s Mac clone program was a good or bad idea or why Jobs was smart about killing it at that time. My point is that every time someone suggests bringing back some sort of Mac clone, people jump to this narrative that Apple tried that in the '90s and it almost ruined the company. And what I'm saying is that's BS. The company was already a disaster, the clone program was a symptom of Apple's state, not a cause of it.
Further, how would any of that apply to $5,000 HP Z workstations running OS X? There is no market for it to eat into. Again, not picking "sides" on whether that's a good thing for Apple, or whether Apple would ever do it. But I see it as a major stretch to take a misunderstood "lesson" from the mid '90s and apply it to a market Apple isn't interested in 20 years later.
I wonder sometimes, if the clone being stopped was a little bit about the design, as well as being about the $$$. I say that because I remember how odd the clones looked compared to what we came to expect from that early Apple design sense AND the G3 had to be on the drawing board.
Maybe '97 sales slump had something to do with this.
Here is the clone.
Here is the 8500 from '96.
Maybe '97 sales slump had something to do with this.
Here is the clone.
Here is the 8500 from '96.
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