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January 16, 2007

speculation

Mac + PC sittin’ in a tree: Apple’s platform-agnostic push

Posted Jan. 16, ’07, 8:06 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Apple » Speculation

Mac + PCLook around the Apple site these days, especially the products announced at last week’s Macworld, and you’ll notice something interesting. Not just shiny, gleaming exteriors, and slick, lickable interfaces. You’ll notice that badge over there: “Mac + PC.” It shows up on the AirPort Extreme page and on the Apple TV page, and though it doesn’t appear on the iPhone page, you do get the same thing from the text on three separate pages: the iPod page tells you “It also lets you sync your content from the iTunes library on your PC or Mac”; the phone page says “It also automatically syncs all your contacts from a PC, Mac, or Internet service”; and the Internet page tells you “iPhone features a rich HTML email client and Safari — the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device — which automatically syncs bookmarks from your PC or Mac.”

If this is surprising to you, then you’re probably living in a fallout shelter waiting for the Russians to blow us to kingdom come. Ever since 2003, when the iPod went fully PC compatible with the release of iTunes for Windows, Apple’s been straddling the great OS divide. In his live panel at Macworld, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber suggested that one of the reasons the iPhone’s software is being touted as “OS X” instead of “Mac OS X” is to keep from scaring off PC users, which struck me as getting right to the heart of the matter. The iPhone target demographic, after all, is not Mac users but iPod users—when it comes to the iPhone, Apple would much rather be thought of as the iPod company than the Mac company.

In fact, ever since the iPod went from cool gadget to phenomenon (which didn’t happen until it became Windows compatible, even if that wasn’t the catalyst), Apple’s become a junkie for the mainstream. Look at the news outlets they cater to: not the community organs like Mac blogs, or even our sibs over at Macworld—they’re the heavy hitters of the mainstream press: TIME, The New York Times, NBC, The Wall Street Journal. So it’s not a surprise that even at Macworld Expo, every device that they announced (or, in the case of the AirPort Extreme, press released) boasts full compatibility with the PC and Mac alike.

In his keynote last week, Steve Jobs talked about the future of the company:

“The Mac, iPod, Apple TV and iPhone. Only one of those is a computer. So we’re changing the name,” said Jobs. “We’re announcing today that we’re dropping the ‘Computer’ from our name, and from this day forward we’re going to be known as Apple Inc.”
Frankly, if it were up to me, I’d yank Apple TV and replace it with iTunes as the fourth major plank of Apple’s business, as the Apple TV is pretty useless without it. The announcement of the iPhone and changing their name from Apple Computer to Apple Inc. has solidified Apple’s position as a company that deals more in consumer electronics than computers. Every device that they now make is platform agnostic. Let me repeat that, because it bears repeating: every device that Apple now makes is platform agnostic.

iPod? Check. Apple TV? Yep. iPhone? You betcha. Mac? Yes, even the Mac, that last memory of an almost forgotten age when Apple hung near death, is platform agnostic, thanks to its Intel processors and Boot Camp—not just an Apple-sanctioned way of running Windows on your Mac, but an Apple-engineered way of running Windows on your Mac. Stuck in a mostly Windows world, the Mac has always had to play nicely with the majority: talking over networks, reading disk formats, etc. But now with Boot Camp (and, of course, virtualization), Mac users can share everything from photos to viruses—er, applications.

One really only need look as far as Apple’s Get a Mac campaign to see the state of the Windows and Mac conflict: the relationship between Mac and PC is not antagonistic, but friendly bickering. It’s the kind of rapport we see in the great comic duos of yesteryear: Abbot and Costello or Laurel and Hardy.

Apple Inc. wants you to know that it’s above the whole Windows vs. Mac war. Sure, they’d rather you have a Mac, but they’re still going to share their toys even if you’re on Windows. The release of the iPhone will only reinforce this position: say goodbye to the “halo effect,” the idea that increased iPod sales will encourage iPod users to get a Mac—with its major products being platform agnostic, I’m not sure that Apple needs, or even really wants, to convert PC users to the Mac. I’m not suggesting that the Mac is going anywhere; it’s sort of become the labor of love that Apple supports with its day job of selling awesome media players, and soon, phones. For all but the most diehard Mac fans, that’s far from a bad thing (especially if there’s any truth to that theory that the Mac’s immunity to viruses stems in part from its low market share). Let’s face it: the Mac will probably never take over the world.

But the iPhone and its descendants just might.


2 Comments

Goose said:

Maybe I'm just being overly paranoiac and/or silly, but I'm getting the feeling that Apple is concentrating less and less on the Mac, and more and more on the iPod/iPhone/what-ever-else-things-they-have-not-announced. After all, at Macworld, there was an alarming lack of Mac related introductions... But then once again, maybe I'm just being overly worried...

January 16, 2007 10:43 AM
Jack said:

It makes me nervous. But let's say you are right and Goose and I are just diehards. Then I would say that the iPod and iPhone and the i...err...tv are trojan horses. Mac sales are going up. I would sugget that Mac users have to get used to the fact that Steve Jobs was never interested in the business market for the Mac. And now that computers at home are not a luxery, but truly and appliance, you can choose to have a Mac and home, and a PC at work, and run windows at home on your mac if you have to.

The paranoid part of me however wonders if now that Apple Computer Inc. is now Apple Inc. is Apple Inc. also going to have a "Mac BU" like Microsoft Inc. does?

Having said that, I just got an email from Apple about iLife '06.

I'm a little worried.

January 16, 2007 11:47 AM

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