A Window into your Mac

April 6, 2006 on 10:04 pm | In General Gaming, Technology

I normally don’t bother talking about the Mac anymore, but this announcement really caught me off guard. Yep, Apple has authorized Windows XP to run on Intel-equipped Apple hardware.

I grew up on Apples and Macs. I had my own personal psychohistory decision point in 1999 though when I could either get a new Mac or switch to PC. Never having really used the latter, I decided to give it a shot. Shortly thereafter I started playing Homeworld, then Diablo 2, then UO, and the rest is history.

But throughout, I always respected the separate world that was Mac. People love their Macs. People accept their PCs, or maybe they respect them for the competent tools that they have. But Macs, well, people talk about them as if they’re art in a box, with a fervor generally reserved for cars and sports teams.

I imagine a few of them were not over thrilled to hear about this. I also imagine that the makers of Virtual PC are thinking their business may be changing in a bit.

Honestly though, that’s life.

Apple was never going to get big on its own. I have long wished they’d just dump the hardware business and go into selling Operating Systems and tools. It’s what they’re really good at, what others have long since emulated, iterated and outright ripped off. I could easily have seen a world where Dell computers come with Mac OS on them. Alas, Apple so loved tinkering with industrial design. This limited their potential in my mind.

Now, does WinXP on the Mac harbring the end for Mac OS? Maybe not. However, I will say this:

• If I’m Adobe, and the best Macs are Intel processors, and they run WinXP, why would I bother dumping serious cash into making a Mac OS native Adobe suite? Yes yes, fonts and legacy files and all that stuff. Think new companies though.
• If I’m Microsoft, the answer is easy. I tried to ignore every Apple convention anyway.
• If I’m Blizzard, one of the few game developers with consistent Mac support, same thing.

But the scariest part?

What could this possibly do for Apple?

Their computers were generally expensive for two reasons: design and volumes sold. I’m sure you all know the more you sell of something, the less expensive it can get. Mass production and all. But this is not an insignificant investment either. Apple’s designs are not the only things that kept their premium price. It was their manufacturing processes too, the things that maintained the great delivery of their designs. They care more about look and hardware use. It’s easy to see that in how they build the machines. It also has meant higher prices, lower volumes and lower margins, made more complicated by the lower volumes they could promise to their OEM supplies, and therefore the lower margins they collect.

This stuff is not cheap to do or everyone would be doing it. And while their prices have come down over the years, they still never significantly grew their market share for a very important reason:

The computer can look as good as possible, but that’s only one reason people would buy it. The other, the in-my-opinion more important one, is what you can do with it. Creativity, legacy file support, all those benefits. The OS is what people really like, I’d dare say even more than the hardware.

As pretty as the machines are, people buy them because of what the computer can do, benefiting from the aesthetic.

Allowing the OS to be pushed to the side means all-out reliance on those people in the world who only want a Mac because it looks better on their desk or in their lap.

Are there more than the 5% of the current marketplace who think like this?

I highly doubt it.