Text 1859, 85 rader
Skriven 2006-06-06 11:44:00 av Robert E Starr JR (2305.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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In article <_sydnfe2RtasEh7ZnZ2dnUVZ_oednZ2d@comcast.com>,
 "Carl" <cengman7@hotmail.com> wrote:

> > On the other hand, though,  keep in mind that market share isn't a
> > particularly meaningful number to anyone who doesn't have a direct
> > financial stake in a vendor.
> 
> I disagree. I think that if Apple had a 30% share, a lot of people that
> wouldn't consider buying an Apple now because it's a niche box would
> consider it because it would be more mainstream.
> 
> Just my opinion.

"Meaningful" may not have been the best word for me to use there, but 
I'm hard pressed to think of a better one. Market share is "meaningful" 
to consumers like "niggardly" is ethnically offensive. Not in any real 
sense, but synthetically as a side-effect of people not actually 
understanding what they're really talking about. That's how we end up 
from the verified fact that Apple's market share in the last quarter was 
3% to the very different notion, essentially tossed into a news report 
to add syllables, that Microsoft's OS drives 97% of all computers in the 
world.

> Witness how badly MS did when trying to move their apps to the
> Mac platform.

That's actually a weird circumstance. Microsoft did a phenomenal job 
with the Mac versions of their productivity apps for quite some time, 
generally surpassing the quality and functionality of the Windows (and 
DOS) versions. It only fell apart with the release of Word 6 and Excel 
5, losing performance and functionality while increasing the disk 
footprint 300% and wrecking what had been a best-in-class UI.


> > Even worse when the "something" and the "something else" aren't
> > the product but the producer. As a related example, consider the case of
> > Be. ...
> 
> 
> Be was ill-advised from the start for a number of reasons. Wonderful
> case study for a business class.

But those reasons were (as I think you imply) about 99% on the business 
side rather than any technical issues. Ultimately Be's problem was Be. 
But the pressure they felt from developers, investors and users to 
provide "FooOS, but not from Foo, Inc." was among the heavy objects they 
dropped on their own foot, because it kept them "fixing" things that 
worked and eventually led them to changing their business plan like 
clockwork every 8 months. Lying outright to the developers was another 
problem.

> >> 5) I'm not suggesting that Apple give away the GUI for free, so it would
> >> generate a revenue stream for the Mac
> >>     platform.  Right now the iPod is keeping Apple afloat.
> >
> > A misconception. A common one, but no more correct for being so. Right
> > now, as it has been for about 15 years, the Mac hardware is keeping
> > Apple afloat. The iPod (and iTunes music store) are helping to keep
> > Apple in the mainstream consciousness, but are certainly not the
> > majority contribution to their fiscal status.
> >
> 
> Ok...that's the common perception from the trade magazines.
> If you're right (and I have no reason to doubt you), the magazines
> are doing significant damage to Apple by reporting it that way.

No worse than the decade spent reporting without criticism analysts' 
projections that Apple absolutely no way no how would last another 24, I 
mean 18, I mean 12 months.

G

-- 
What I write is what I mean. I request that anyone who decides to respond
please refrain from "disagreeing" with something I didn't write in the first
place.
                                      
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