Ding ! OK , who had “ About 24 hours ” in the “ How long it ’ll take someone to indite something stupefied about the WWDC keynote ” puddle ?
kudos to PC Pro ’s Barry Collins for writing“Is Apple planning to kill off Mac OS X?”and , either willfully or not , violatingIan Betteridge ’s Law of Headlines . He did , however , prove the Macalope ’s Theorem of Apple Causation , which says that if there are two potential reasons for something Apple will do — one uncontroversial and one firebomb — the prospect that a author will raise the incendiary one approaches infinity if they write for a issue with “ personal computer ” in the title .
As Gerald Ratner will show , endure on degree and trash your own product is n’t a particularly good sales strategy .
For those unfamiliar with Gerald Ratner ( as the Macalope was ) , he made a speech in whichhe called his own company ’s products “ total Irish bull ” . Do you recollect Jobs calling the Mac “ full crap ” ? Neither does the Macalope . Perhaps in Britain , where Collins is , they show a special “ full-length and unedited ” version of the Keynote that ’s too risqué for American viewers .
Yet when Steve Jobs announced last Nox that he was “ going to demote the personal computer and the Mac to just be a gadget ” , it was n’t a million mile aside from the “ entire dogshit ” quip that cost Ratner his job and , very nearly , his company .
Actually , it was , unless you ’re looking for fake controversy in which case , secretive enough for journalmalism ! Collins fails to take into considerateness several thing here , in his kick to claim that Apple ’s replacing Mac OS X with iOS . First , in the scenario Jobs was draw , the iPhone and iPad arealso“just equipment . ” So the Mac is now anequal , not subservient . Second , this new paradigm replaces a decade old one with the computer as the hub for digital media , which people were really getting tired of . There is not a PC user on the face of the Earth that enjoy physically cable their iPhone or iPad for get new medium on it . Finally , detect what Jobs said . He said they were demoting the PC and the Mac . Is Apple also replacing Windows 7 with iOS ?
Now , thatthey’d care to do .
Does Apple really desire or even take full - juicy Mac OS go ? The evidence progressively indicate not .
Collins ’s “ grounds ” is that the market share of the iPhone and iPad is greater than the Mac ’s ever was , which is like watching a production of Non Sequitur Theater . So what ? Jobs also noted that in a refuse personal computer marketplace , Macs are bucking the movement and sell great .
The only part of Apple ’s portfolio where iOS does n’t make sense is in the mellow - end . Yet , Apple ’s already discontinued its Xserve range of server and the company barely speaks of its incarnate customer these days : it ’s almost only fixated on the consumer market .
OK , you ’re clear just not paying attention and should stop typing right now . ascertain out the most late quarterly league call and you ’ll see several reference to how pleased Apple is with its advance gaining corporate customers . Yes , Apple focuses mostly on the consumer grocery and it ’s always been overmodest about its efforts in the corporate food market , where it ’s been running more of a stealth campaign , but do n’t bedevil that with giving up .
Or , well , go forward and confuse that . It ’s no skin off the Macalope ’s skin . It just makes you see like a cola .
Watts Martinmakes exactly the point the Macalope was going to about where Collins is wrong :
I get the effect that the doomsayers crying that iOS mean the expiry of OS X are simultaneously right and deeply overlook the point . OS X is n’t being dumbed down , it ’s being radically reshaped .
Martin finds the changes in Lion more revolutionary than the change in iOS 5 and the Macalope does n’t disagree , but the point is that both these platforms are evolving together . It ’s not an either / or , unless you ’re just lob grenade , which is what Collins allow for us with .
Could Apple eventually phase out Mac OS X ? I suspect it ’s already doing so .
Totally . If by “ phase out ” you mean “ alteration . ”
