More of my sites

WinInfo Daily News
SuperSite for Windows
Windows IT Pro Magazine
Connected Home
Thurrott Dot Com
Windows Weekly at TWIT

About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Friday, March 31, 2006

30 years later: Where Apple fails ... where it succeeds

So Michael Kanellos is a smart, insightful guy, and naturally he's going to get hammered by the Mac fanatics for this one. But while it may be hard to give him any little breathing room for foisting what is obviously meant to be purely a conversation-starter, he does make a few good points:

If Apple Computer is so great, how come it's so small?

With all the hoopla surrounding the company--and you'll hear a lot this week as Apple turns 30--you'd think it pulled off the first manned spaceflight to Neptune or invented long division. Instead, the company's recent accomplishments include making it possible to buy Foghat singles on the Web and selling a leather pouch for music players for $99.

Apple held 2.3 percent of the world's computer market at the end of last year. If you compare that to global population figures, Apple is roughly the Philippines, Ghana and Spain combined.

Apple shipped 4.74 million Macs in calendar year 2005. That's 20 percent lower than the growth in shipments (5.7 million) Dell experienced in the same year. Dell, in other words, grows an Apple and a fifth a year--and investors worry about Dell losing its edge?

For the record, I think that what makes Apple special can't be measured by traditional company metrics. It's kind of like the basketball player who contributes team-oriented play at the right time but never gets rewarded with decent stats. Apple is special because they do things differently, period. Apple is special because it's lasted for 30 years despite almost always doing things differently. And it's special because Apple has stood up to some of the most powerful companies on earth and come away, if not triumphant at all times, at least with its values intact. They're unique in corporate America, and truly unique in the computer industry.

I discuss a lot of traditional PC metrics here, including such things as market share and even "mind share," which is hard to measure but arguably as valuable. I discuss these things precisely because they are measurable and interesting, but of course they don't tell the whole story about Apple. What happens sometimes, however, is that people who love Apple--and let's face it, they're few in number but very vocal and, more important, very interesting--often obfuscate the facts in order to make the reality of Apple--the measurable bits--match their sometimes fanatical view of the company (i.e. that it is perfect and never makes any mistakes). Apple is both a company--measurable and comparable to other "similar" corporate entities--and a way of life (immeasurable and interesting on a completely different level). They are, in other words, different, and as such, as so much more interesting than virtually any other company that supposedly competes in the same markets.

People often don't "get" my position on Apple and the truly small-minded believe I'm simply out to put down the company for some vaguely petty reasons. This is not the case. I'm a huge fan of Apple, but I do recoil from the more insane viewpoints about the company that I see offered up fairly regularly online as if they were the gospel truth. Apple is not pure Good, and cannot be viewed in terms of black and white, and I think my exploration of the gray areas sometimes offends the acolytes. I can't apologize for that. Apple is important enough to study and explore. I think that's pretty much the highest compliment one could give any company, and if you consider my day job, the depth of this compliment should be all the more obvious. With experience and maturity comes understanding. Some day, you may be surprised to discover we're all really on the same page.

So happy birthday, Apple. And thank you for making things far more interesting and entertaining than they would be in your absence. I don't agree with everything you do, and thank goodness for that. But I love where you're at, and where you've come from, and I'm intrigued by where you're going.

[ Posted at 8:40 AM | Permalink ]