Apple: Going For The Jugular... And Cutting Its Own Throat

In a graph­ic design group I recent­ly got into a dis­cus­sion about appli­ca­tion choice on the Macintosh. During this dis­cus­sion, in response to the accu­sa­tion that, with­out Apple and com­pe­ti­tion, we would “be stuck in a Windows world,’ I said the following:

Actually, Apple’s cur­rent direc­tion is the biggest pro­po­nent for using Windows. Apple is doing its best to force every­one to Windows by stran­gling the mar­ket for third-party appli­ca­tions devel­op­ers on the Mac. 

Here, flame-worthy as it is, is what I meant by that comment:

Apple is aggres­sive­ly try­ing to break what it con­sid­ers a depen­dence on soft­ware devel­op­ers like Microsoft, Adobe, Quark, and others.

Microsoft Office has been the only seri­ous pro­duc­tiv­i­ty suite for over a decade now. Office’s con­stituent apps–Word, Excel, PowerPoint–all enjoy bet­ter than 95% mar­ket share. There is no seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion. Whether WordPerfect is bet­ter than Word or the late Adobe Persuasion was bet­ter than PowerPoint is a moot dis­cus­sion; Microsoft won and owns the office pro­duc­tiv­i­ty mar­ket on both Windows and Mac platforms.

Three years ago Apple and Microsoft got into a major argu­ment about the direc­tion of Apple. Microsoft owned a big chunk of Apple cour­tesy of the $150 mil­lion Microsoft invest­ed in the late-Nineties to keep Apple alive. The dis­agree­ment got both com­pa­nies throw­ing tantrums and threat­en­ing to take their respec­tive balls and go home. Apple told Microsoft that the Mac did­n’t need MS Office, threat­en­ing to urge Mac users not to use it. Excel then Word for the Mac were Microsoft’s very first appli­ca­tions, long before they built the Windows OS, and Office for Mac still remains a major prof­it cen­ter for Microsoft. Microsoft, know­ing that Apple could­n’t replace Office with any oth­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tool (Corel had run WordPerfect and Quatro Pro into the ground already), called Apple’s bluff and threat­ened to sim­ply stop devel­op­ing Office for the Mac. Despite the blus­ter­ing that fol­lowed, Apple knew it could­n’t sur­vive with­out pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tools like a good word proces­sor (Word), spread­sheet app (Excel), and pre­sen­ta­tion pro­gram (PowerPoint). Without pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tools, busi­ness users and a large por­tion of the cre­ative mar­ket would be forced to defect to Windows. Apple got scared and backed down

Adobe makes the indus­try stan­dard image edit­ing appli­ca­tion. There are oth­er choic­es for non-professionals, but Photoshop owns the pro­fes­sion­al image edit­ing mar­ket. Illustrator is owns slight­ly bet­ter than half the pro­fes­sion­al vec­tor draw­ing mar­ket, and it’s share is grow­ing because inno­va­tion in FreeHand is slip­ping. Despite Adobe mak­ing the PDF spec pub­lic and sev­er­al very good com­peti­tors appear­ing, Adobe’s Acrobat is still the major PDF creation/editing soft­ware on the Mac (and Windows, but that’s not the point).

The delay in Quark releas­ing on OS X‑compatible ver­sion of QuarkXPress caused a MAJOR hit to Apple’s OS X/G4 sales. So bad was the hit, in fact, that Apple had to reverse the exec­u­tive order straight from Steve Jobs that no new Macs would be sold with OS 9 Classic Mode dual-boot. Apple had announced a cut off date of January 2002 for pur­chas­ing new G4s with Classic Mode dual-boot. Because there was no OS X‑compatible ver­sion of QuarkXPress, cre­ative pros who relied on Quark, includ­ing many MAJOR print and pro­duc­tion hous­es, said they sim­ply could­n’t upgrade to OS X or buy new com­put­ers from Apple. This turned out to be a big hit to Apple’s sales (and stock price).

So Apple pushed its dead­line back for six months, delay­ing its own busi­ness plan of migrat­ing all Mac users to OS X, which pushed back huge plans for iPod, iMusic, and MUCH more. Even after that dead­line had passed, until Quark 6 was released, Apple qui­et­ly vio­lat­ed its own edict that it would no longer sell dual-boot Macs. If you called to order a new Mac, all you had to say was that you would use it for Quark to get a dual-boot at no extra charge.

Even with the dual-boot sys­tems, com­pa­nies that relied on Quark were reluc­tant to upgrade. Why invest in new equip­ment and learn­ing a new OS if, when it came to their pri­ma­ry appli­ca­tion of Quark, the new sys­tem would work EXACTLY the same was what they already had? Further, even if they want­ed to upgrade to OS X‑compatible ver­sions of Pshop, Illustrator, FreeHand, etc., get­ting those now OS X‑compatible files into Classic for use in Quark was a pain in the neck. So, rather than deal with the has­sles, would-be OS X cus­tomers in the cre­ative mar­ket saved their mon­ey and waited.

Single-handedly, Quark cost Apple tens of mil­lions because Quark’s devel­op­ment team was lethargic.

To help defray the costs and devel­op­men­tal delay Quark caused, Apple tried sev­er­al lay­ers of con­cur­rent rem­e­dy. First, they tried extend­ing out their dual-boot dead­line. As I said above, that did lit­tle to ame­lio­rate the sit­u­a­tion. Next they struck up a deal with Adobe, bundling the already OS X‑compatible InDesign 2.x with new Macs. While some cre­ative com­pa­nies jumped at this great oppor­tu­ni­ty, many held off because InDesign was still unproven in major work­flows. Third, I think Apple did some behind the scenes deal­ings. This is just my per­son­al opin­ion based on gut feel­ing and a few very vague con­ver­sa­tions with Apple per­son­nel; I can’t back up this belief with evi­dence, but I am whol­ly con­vinced of it nonethe­less. I believe Apple sent some of its own engi­neers to help Quark port XPress over to OS X, which is a con­flict of inter­est with some of Apple’s then-current licens­ing agree­ments with oth­er vendors.

Whatever Apple tried, noth­ing helped the cre­ative market–Apple’s num­ber one mar­ket by far–adopt OS X. Oddly enough, when Quark 6 was released for OS X, sales did spike, but not as big as Apple thought. Quark had wait­ed so long to update XPress that much of the mar­ket had already decid­ed to move to InDesign. Apple was PISSED.

Sales of Macs, both new G5s and lega­cy single-boot G4s, are high, but it isn’t because of Quark, iron­i­cal­ly. Adobe Creative Suite caused a major spike in OS X sales, but sales had been mov­ing steadi­ly before that as well.

Now that the back­ground is out of the way, here’s the main point: Apple depends heav­i­ly on appli­ca­tion devel­op­ers like Microsoft, Adobe, and Quark. Because there isn’t much choice for con­sumers in OS X‑compatible appli­ca­tions, the ones that ARE avail­able add major val­ue to OS X itself. While the Mac is gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty in the home and col­lege mar­ket, it is still a rel­a­tive­ly niche-market oper­at­ing sys­tem. The cre­ative mar­ket is the only one in which the Mac has the dom­i­nant share, and not by too great a lead there. If the cre­ative mar­ket defect­ed, Apple would be in SERIOUS jeop­ardy of dying. If Apple had any doubts of this, the reduc­tion in sales caused by Quark drove the point home like a kick to the groin.

Without appli­ca­tions like Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and QuarkXPress, OS X, and all of Apple’s plans for the future, would be dead­er than the Commodore 64. Apple knows this all too well. And Apple hates being depen­dent on some­one else.

So, Apple is work­ing dili­gent­ly to break its reliance on appli­ca­tion devel­op­ers. Toward this goal Apple is devel­op­ing inter­nal­ly appli­ca­tions to replace all their major part­ners. Note I did­n’t say “to com­pete with all their major part­ners.” Apple is doing exact­ly what it has always blast­ed Microsoft for doing: Exploiting the fact that it owns the oper­at­ing sys­tem by bundling its new competitor-killing apps with the OS. By bundling apps with the OS free or almost-free, Apple is stran­gling the com­pe­ti­tion who, as appli­ca­tion devel­op­ers with­out the lux­u­ry of oper­at­ing sys­tem and hard­ware sales to cov­er a loss, MUST charge for their appli­ca­tions. Adobe, Quark, and even Microsoft when it comes to Mac appli­ca­tions, can’t afford to give any­thing away. Apple knows the appli­ca­tion devel­op­ers can’t afford to give away their soft­ware free, but Apple itself can, even if just ini­tial­ly to gain the mar­ket dom­i­nance, so Apple is doing it.

This is exact­ly how Microsoft beat WordPerfect and Lotus in the Windows-based Office pro­duc­tiv­i­ty mar­ket (MS Office was so cheap the oth­ers could­n’t com­pete), and how they beat Netscape in the brows­er market.

The first shot Apple fired was Final Cut Pro, the video edit­ing appli­ca­tion Apple bought a few years ago. The light ver­sion of Final Cut Pro, iMovie, comes bun­dled with OS X. For very lit­tle mon­ey pro­fes­sion­al users can upgrade to Final Cut Pro. Apple was smart enough to rec­og­nize the Desktop Video Revolution in its ear­ly stages, and knew that Adobe Première, whose only com­peti­tor to that point was the enor­mous­ly expen­sive Avid line of prod­ucts, was the appli­ca­tion to beat. So Apple beat it by giv­ing away iMovie and all but giv­ing away Final Cut Pro. So effec­tive was their stran­gling of Première that Adobe had to drop fur­ther devel­op­ment of Première on the Mac with the very next ver­sion. Final Cut Pro is now the ONLY choice in pro­fes­sion­al video edit­ing on OS X.

Apple’s next tar­get was Microsoft. KeyNote, the Apple com­peti­tor to Microsoft PowerPoint, debuted among great fan­fare. Like iMovie, it was giv­en away free with the OS. In a mat­ter of months KeyNote became the defac­to stan­dard for pre­sen­ta­tion soft­ware on OS X, even for users who also bought Office, which includ­ed PowerPoint. Now that KeyNote is the stan­dard, Apple is charg­ing $99 for it.

Acrobat was hit by Apple’s inte­grat­ed PDF cre­ation and view­ing technology.

The next depen­dence Apple want­ed to break was the brows­er mar­ket. Internet Explorer and Netscape were depen­den­cies Apple did­n’t want. Thus Apple devel­oped Safari. Free in the OS, no one could com­pete. Microsoft instant­ly stopped devel­op­ment of Internet Explorer, though I think this was as much moti­vat­ed by Gates tak­ing his ball and going home as by the fact that Microsoft knew, from its own expe­ri­ence of bundling a brows­er into the OS, that IE did­n’t stand a chance against an inte­grat­ed browser.

Simultaneous to Adobe pur­chas­ing the DVD design pro­gram it re-dubbed Encore and the lead­ing audio-editing appli­ca­tion, Cool Edit Pro, renamed to Adobe Audition, Apple began devel­op­ing com­pet­ing pack­ages DVD Studio Pro and Soundtrack. Consequently Adobe did­n’t even both­er build­ing OS X‑compatible ver­sions of these applications.

To kill Outlook/Entourage, the Microsoft Office e‑mail, sched­ul­ing, and con­tact man­age­ment appli­ca­tion, Apple devel­oped applets iCal, Mail, and iSync.

Panther, ver­sion 10.3 of OS X, includes free FontBook, a font man­age­ment util­i­ty intend­ed to stran­gle indus­try stan­dard font man­age­ment tool Extensis Suitcase and its lead­ing com­peti­tor FontReserve, which Extensis bought in 2003 to con­sol­i­date the only com­pe­ti­tion posed to Apple’s then-upcoming bun­dled FontBook.

To com­pete with Microsoft Access, anoth­er com­po­nent of Office, Apple has rein­vest­ed in the devel­op­ment of one of its old but still wide­ly used prod­ucts, FileMaker Pro. The new ver­sion of FileMaker Pro, released just a month ago and offi­cial­ly owned by FileMaker, Inc. (for­mer­ly Claris, Inc.), a sub­sidiary of Apple, now is much more friend­ly to users famil­iar with Access.

Going for the jugu­lar against Microsoft Office, Apple is reviv­ing anoth­er old Claris prop­er­ty, AppleWorks (for­mer­ly Claris Works). While the cur­rent ver­sion of AppleWorks is more of a con­sumer all-in-one pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tool, a pro­fes­sion­al grade ver­sion (whose name may or may not be AppleWorks Pro) is being writ­ten by Apple from the ground up. The goal of this new office suite is, of course, to kill Microsoft Office on the Mac. In all like­li­hood AppleWorks Pro (or what­ev­er it is to be called) will ini­tial­ly be giv­en away free. After it sup­plants Microsoft Office, AppleWorks (the light ver­sion) will prob­a­bly be bun­dled with the OS free, while the Pro ver­sion is avail­able for a mod­est upgrade price.

Once Apple breaks the mar­ket for Microsoft appli­ca­tions on the OS X desk­top, it will unveil its Adobe and Quark killers. Drawing from some of its old appli­ca­tion hold­ings, rumors indi­cate Apple cur­rent­ly has in devel­op­ment pro­fes­sion­al grade appli­ca­tions it plans to use to dom­i­nate the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories: image edit­ing (to unseat Photoshop on the Mac), vec­tor draw­ing, pre­sum­ably with Flash out­put (to kill Illustrator, FreeHand, and Flash), and page lay­out (no more wait­ing for Quark or pro­mot­ing InDesign).

Apple is dri­ving straight and hard toward total inde­pen­dence from appli­ca­tion devel­op­ers. While com­pe­ti­tion is good for con­sumers, Apple’s hard-line, stran­gle hold tac­tics won’t cre­ate com­pe­ti­tion; they’ll kill it while cre­at­ing a monop­oly for Apple on the Mac desk­top. As we’ve learned through watch­ing Microsoft stamp out the office suite, brows­er, and oth­er com­pe­ti­tion, appli­ca­tion devel­op­ers sim­ply can’t afford to com­pete with free or almost-free soft­ware bun­dled with an OS.

Apple has stat­ed pub­licly that it is con­sid­er­ing split­ting the com­pa­ny in two: One com­pa­ny for hard­ware and oper­at­ing sys­tem, one for appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment. Even if the split hap­pens, both com­pa­nies will still be Apple, with unfet­tered access to the devel­op­ments of either, and the abil­i­ty to bun­dle and give away appli­ca­tions with the OS. Whether Apple splits is irrel­e­vant to its vision of a monopoly.

Though Microsoft will take a big hit with the loss of rev­enue from Office for the Mac, Apple’s cur­rent direc­tion is ulti­mate­ly good news for the Redmond, WA giant. Consumers have proven again and again that, when their choic­es are tak­en away, they find new choic­es. If Apple chokes off user choic­es on the Mac, Windows will be wait­ing with open arms to wel­come them into a world rich with appli­ca­tion choices.

If Apple con­tin­ues on its cur­rent course, that’s exact­ly what will hap­pen. And, despite the pop­u­lar­i­ty of OS X, Apple will be right back to where it was ten and then five years ago: A strug­gling lit­tle sec­ond class cit­i­zen in the world of com­put­ers. The last two times Microsoft bailed them out. I won­der, if Apple dri­ves itself back into a hole after alien­at­ing all of its part­ners and turn­ing off the rev­enue stream to any­one else who makes any mon­ey on the Mac desk­top, who will pull them out this time?

18 thoughts on “Apple: Going For The Jugular... And Cutting Its Own Throat

  1. Mark Newhouse

    Interesting post. Unfortunately you have some of your “facts” wrong, which makes me ques­tion the valid­i­ty of your asser­tions about future Apple products. 

    For exam­ple, about Keynote, you state: “Like iMovie, it was giv­en away free with the OS.” According to the orig­i­nal Keynote press Release, Keynote has always cost $99 and was nev­er bun­dled with new Macs. And fur­ther, Keynote is far from the “stan­dard” that you think it is, as it cur­rent­ly lacks much of the func­tion­al­i­ty of PowerPoint, such as the abil­i­ty to link to a web page, or show a QuickTime movie in an ele­gant man­ner. Maybe in the next version…

    You also state “Final Cut Pro is now the ONLY choice in pro­fes­sion­al video edit­ing on OS X,” for­get­ting about Avid, which cur­rent­ly sells Avid Xpress DV for both Mac and PC at $695, $300 less than FCP.

    With regard to IE for the Mac, Microsoft has sim­ply begun charg­ing for it via their MSN ISP. And, as it is begin­ning to do on Windows as well, this is open­ing up the com­pe­ti­tion for oth­er 3rd par­ty brows­er mak­ers such as FireFox and Opera. You also for­got to men­tion that the WebCore that Safari runs on is part of the OS and can be lever­aged by third par­ty devel­op­ers, like OmniWeb and NetNewsWire have done, allow­ing them to com­pete on fea­tures, being on a (near­ly) equal par with Apple WRT the stan­dards based ren­der­ing engine.

    When you can’t get sim­ple facts like these straight, I hes­i­tate to take seri­ous­ly any of your assump­tions about what Apple is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing to “break the mar­ket for Microsoft appli­ca­tions on the OS X desk­top [and] unveil its Adobe and Quark killers.”

  2. Christopher J Smith

    It sure is inter­est­ing to see what non-Mac users THINK the issues are with Apple. Half-truths lies and DAMN lies. Well none of this changes any­thing, and Apple con­tin­ues to be the best choice for per­son­al com­put­ing. Trouble is that oth­er peo­ple would rather use Microsoft junk rather than some­thing decent. Says some­thing about oth­er peo­ple rather than Apple Computer.

  3. Jack

    iMovie is not the “free” ver­sion of Final Cut Pro. iMovie is geared towards home users, while FCP is for the cre­ative pro­fes­sion­al. FCP Express, which costs 299.99 may be the clos­est thing to “free” that Apple offers in regards to FCP.

  4. Me

    Puh-lease. Apple is not try­ing to replace Office amd Keynote is not a stan­dard. I also don’t see them try­ing to replace Photoshop, Quark or In Design. Your whole premise is screwy. I’m sure Microsoft is hap­py as hell not to have to devel­op IE for the mac any­more. it’s not like they were going to put ay more resources into it anyway.

  5. Me

    Btw that hair­cut looks stu­pid and so do your pictures.

  6. Alain

    ÇThe IE brows­er core is part of the OS on Windows, just like Mac.È

    False, the WebCore isn’t a part of the Mac OS API.

  7. david

    First, Microsoft invest­ed mon­ey in Apple about 6 years ago – at the same time that Jobs returned to con­trol at Apple. It was part of an agree­ment that result­ed in both com­pa­nies end­ing their long stand­ing court bat­tles and agree­ing to cross license some tech­nol­o­gy. It was also a big sign that Microsoft believed in the via­bil­i­ty of Apple – a com­pa­ny that it makes a huge prof­it on through the sales of soft­ware. Microsoft long ago sold that stock for a hefty profit.

    The only argu­ment Microsoft and Apple have had in the last five years has to do with the pace that Apple set for mov­ing OS 9 users to OS X. Microsoft deliv­ered an OS X only update in 2001 and sales were slow because Mac users were slow to upgrade to OS X. You are flat out wrong about Apple argu­ing that it can/should do with­out Microsoft.

    Given that you are clue­less about this leads me to believe you are clue­less about the rest. Just anoth­er would be Apple ana­lyst who does­n’t both­er to do his homework.

  8. DD

    There is no ques­tion that when Apple attempts to add val­ue to its com­put­ers by bundling soft­ware, it strains its rela­tion­ship with devel­op­ers. But I think part of the moti­va­tion for Apple releas­ing its own soft­ware is as a show­case – to show what can be done on the plat­form with a bit of effort. When Apple bun­dles iApps with its com­put­ers, it tells devel­op­ers that if you want to com­pete in this mar­ket, you are going to have to pro­duce high qual­i­ty appli­ca­tions. What is the point of hav­ing great hard­ware with all kinds of built in func­tion­al­i­ty, if the soft­ware is lousy?

    Also, if you think Apple bundling iApps with its com­put­ers is a threat, then con­sid­er the threat of Open Source, where Apps that can accom­plish all kinds of things are avail­able on many plat­forms. It is no secret that Microsoft con­sid­ers OSS to be much more of a threat to its busi­ness than Apple. If the Gimp is not keep­ing Adobe engi­neers awake at night, then they have a prob­lem much more seri­ous than Apple’s FCP or iMovie.

    DD

  9. Jim

    inter­est­ing com­men­tary to be sure, but con­sid­er that Apple’s apps do have func­tion­al­i­ty the com­pe­ti­tion does­n’t and behave togeth­er pret­ty darn well. But it is bundling as you say, then again Apple is not the momopoly MS is.

    One thing though is you should look at todays quotes in the media about WWDC. There are LOADS of NEW DEVELOPERS from the Linux, java and oth­er worlds com­ing to Macintosh.

    IF, as you say Apple is shut­ting out devel­op­ers this would not be true.

    Try doing the home­work befo­er turn­ing in th assingment!

  10. J Parks

    I don’t see how includ­ing robust core appli­ca­tions and fea­tures that con­sumers and busi­ness­es need is a problem.

    Also, MS’s 150M invest­ment was non-voting stock – they have no own­er­ship rights.

    p.s. You talk a lot. :)

  11. z

    as oth­ers have not­ed, there are MANY fac­tu­al errors in this arti­cle. i won’t even begin to list them…

    pure unin­formed, myopically-speculative, pseudo-thinking…

  12. Jalamdhara

    Actually Pirah, you prob­a­bly got your­self con­fused with the “Free Keynote” dis­tri­b­u­tion dur­ing the MacWorld Expo Presentation in which Steve Jobs gave cel­e­brat­ing the Keynote. It was nev­er giv­en freely out­side that par­tic­u­lar event.
    Second of all, the set up of Safari and its web­core is vast­ly dif­fer­ent from the IE and its core. A Third par­ty can lever­age the Webcore made by Konquer (and Apple) with­out putting in a cent of their $ into the ren­der­ing engine, leav­ing them to do cre­ative work on the GUI front that they would have not oth­er­wise had the time and the mon­ey to do so. Omni-web did just that. I don’t see any oth­er IE-clones out there? Do ya? Thought not. Microsoft’s web­cores aren’t open source, Apple’s web­core is (well, actu­al­ly it belongs to Konquer, sort of). So your point in try­ing to assert the oth­er’s point was “moot” is actu­al­ly moot. No big­gie though. 

    As for your so called “claim” of low num­ber of Mac web surfers, please back up that assertion.

    As for MS own­ing a huge chunk of Apple. . I think some­one already beat me to it. However, that per­son did­n’t point out that those stocks were “non-voting” stocks. . mean­ing. . they had no “say” in any­thing what­so­ev­er when it came to Apple’s direc­tions. The oth­er per­son was cor­rect as well, Microsoft made near­ly 2 to 3 times back the prof­it on the stocks itself. 

    I’m a Wintel user by force. I just wish SolidWorks could run on the MacOSX plat­form, I would switch in a heart-beat.
    I think it’s time for a new horse in the sta­ble when it comes to Office Productivity. StarOffice, Open Office, both are two viable com­pe­ti­tion. . if Apple could get onto the race-track and do what they did with Safari, they could eas­i­ly have a viable pro­duc­tiv­i­ty office. Of course, that would mean open­ing up AppleWorks, Keynote. . some­thing I’m not sure whether they’re leery about doing. Nevertheless, would be able to make an inroad into the microsoft hegemony. 

    As opposed to what some peo­ple think… peo­ple do like “CHANGES”. . as long as it’s some­thing that gives them more pro­duc­tiv­i­ty than before, or at least “choic­es”. The prob­lem in itself is “edu­cat­ing” the pub­lic on how the ‘change’ itself can be ben­e­fi­cial and that they would­n’t be ‘miss­ing’ any­thing by switching.. .

  13. Pariah Burke

    I recall a pro­mo­tion short­ly after KeyNote’s release where­in it was giv­en out free with the pur­chase of a new Mac. As I can’t find any doc­u­men­ta­tion to back that up, how­ev­er, I will defer to you. Still, don’t believe every­thing you read in a press release.

    Missing Avid Xpress was an over­sight, a typo, as you can see a lit­tle above that that I did men­tion Avid.

    Your points about IE and Safari are moot and do not con­tra­dict what I said.

    I did­n’t “for­get” to men­tion any­thing of the sort. It isn’t relavent.

    Yes, Apple allows third-party devel­op­ers to build on the WebCore. How is this dif­fer­ent from IE under Windows? The IE brows­er core is part of the OS on Windows, just like Mac. Third-party devel­op­ers can build on that core, thus mak­ing use of the OSes’ bun­dled func­tion­al­i­ty rather than hav­ing to rein­vent the wheel. There are dozens of browsers (and oth­er appli­ca­tions) mak­ing use of the IE core code in Windows, yet IE still dom­i­nates the Windows desk­top brows­er mar­ket by an incred­i­ble mar­gin. Why would Apple find dif­fer­ent results for the same practice?

    I did­n’t go into great depth about the fea­tures of any of the apps delib­er­ate­ly, nor did I go into all the sim­u­la­ri­ties between the Mac and Windows. If you want to know the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between the OSes, there are dis­cus­sions and arti­cles ad nau­se­um that dis­cuss exact­ly that.

    Microsoft pulling IE was, in part, moti­vat­ed by Apple’s devel­op­ment of Safari. The low num­ber of Mac-based Internet users was anoth­er fac­tor. The tech­no­log­i­cal fac­tors that affect­ed both IE and Netscape when run­ning under a Mac OS were a fac­tor. Yet anoth­er fac­tor was the argu­ment between Microsoft and Apple as men­tioned ear­li­er in my article.

  14. Dave Mori

    I don’t agree at all as to Apple’s moti­va­tions. Final Cut was a response to the CEO of AVID (the pre­mière pro­fes­sion­al video edit­ing sys­tem) cut­ting a sweet­heart deal with Microsoft and get­ting SoftImage (which MS bought to kill of SGI), in exchange for AVID agree­ing to announce its inten­tions to drop sup­port of AVID on the Mac OS and move exclu­sive­ly to Windows NT/2000. Adobe Première was always a cheap­er, soft­ware only video edit­ing sys­tem which was nev­er used seri­ous­ly in Hollywood. I know peo­ple who used it to do com­mer­cials and short 90 sec­ond tags, but nobody who did an entire film with Première. Hollywood “vot­ed” to migrate to Final Cut in order to get a solu­tion guar­an­teed to be on the Mac OS and a solu­tion that was MPEG and MPEG‑2 based (the pro­fes­sion­al movie indus­try’s dig­i­tal stan­dard) instead of using AVID’s lousy Motion JPEG codec based solu­tions requir­ing expen­sive, heat pro­duc­ing hard­ware add on cards. Adobe at the time was lazy in putting pro­fes­sion­al lev­el fea­tures to Hollywood indus­try stan­dards in Première. It, too, was look­ing to drop Mac OS sup­port in the late 1990s. What Apple did with Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, iMovie/iDVD was exact­ly what Adobe did with Photoshop and Photoshop LE/Elements – it rec­og­nized that there are Professional Markets, Pro-sumer Markets and Consumer mar­kets demand­ing var­i­ous lev­els of pow­er and sim­plic­i­ty at dif­fer­ent price points. Something that Adobe and AVID did not real­ly under­stand or cazre to address. Apple is not so much try­ing to mus­cle in on its devel­op­er mar­kets – it was pro­tect­ing its solu­tions mar­kets to make sure that the MacOS is viable as a plat­form and a solu­tion. Nobody in the indus­try “gives away” any­thing any­more. You price things at dif­fer­ent price points with dif­fer­ent fea­tures, aimed at dif­fer­ent mar­kets. To put all your eggs (prod­ucts) in a sin­gle, pro­fes­sion­al mar­ket or con­sumer or pro-sumer mar­ket is plain stu­pid. The mar­ket is fick­le, and even Hollywood goes through cycles of bad times when it buys almost noth­ing – like every­time there is an extend­ed actor’s or direc­tor’s union strike.

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