I disagree with you. Market share does matter to all users. If a
platform has very little market share, the software publishers will have
less interest to write software programs for it. And hardware
manufecturers will not have great interest to develop parts for it. Now
it it just the case. Macintosh was the revolution of desktop publishing a
number of years ago. In fact, PC was not as smart as Mac for long time.
However, Apple has made several stretegic major mistakes in the war of
microcomputer competition which caused you and I might not see Mac in the
market place any more some day. First of all, Macintosh's revolution has
made itself incompitable with Apple II software which had made a lot of
users difficult to switch from old machines to new machines. PC's
"backward compitabililty" policy has kept its users from the first day.
Secondly, Apple refused to allow other manufecturers to clone its Mac. PC
can never do it because PC is never 100% owned by one single company. So
thousands manufacturers can easily clone PC. Apple has to face
competition agains about 2,000 manufecturers worldwide. This is too hard
for Apple to win. Thirdly, Apple in 1991 had licensed Microsoft to puoduce
and sell "Windows like" operating system for PCs. This is the biggest
mistake Apple ever made in its history which may cost its life. Windows
has made the difference between PC and Mac much smaller. That is why today
you can see the same software on both machines. Without Windows, PC is
never going to be as smart as Mac. Probably OS2 would be much popular
than it is today. Finally, in the last hardware battle against the "big
three", Apple lost again. Power PC chip had been about seven months later
than Pentium. As you know, every half year now there is a revolution.
Half year is too long. There are also other minor mistakes Apple has
made, such as not making Novell under its control. Macintosh is lack for
a powerful network system. Macintosh is a great computer in the history.
However, its market is not expanding, and its share is shrinking. This
has made itself harder and harder for users to choose. For example, last
year I was trying to set up a BBS for the school I work for. I first trid
to find a BBS software on Mac. I couldn't get it. Then I went to the PC
side. I found tons of it. I worked in a pure Mac school for about two
years as a technology resourse scholar. But I found it more and more
difficult to convince myself that Mac is really the best platform. ALL
software publishers which wrote only for Mac before now write the same
software for PC. You can find ClarisWorks, PhotoPaint, HyperCard, and a
lot of Mac staff on Windows now. But, you can not find a lot of Windows
staff on Mac. This does make big difference. If Apple does not improve
its marketing and developing strategy, someday Mac will die. Good
machines might not survive. Microsoft is never the best publisher of all
software programs, but now it controls almost 85% of all software in this
globe.
Bin Xie
Information Technology Specialist/Instructor
Westport Business Technology/Communications Magnet High School
Kansas City, Missouri 64111
bxiekc@cyclops.pei.edu