Re: [Fed-Talk] WWDC June 7-11; Mac OS X de-emphasized; Enterprise sessions missing
Re: [Fed-Talk] WWDC June 7-11; Mac OS X de-emphasized; Enterprise sessions missing
- Subject: Re: [Fed-Talk] WWDC June 7-11; Mac OS X de-emphasized; Enterprise sessions missing
- From: "Blackmon Jerry (Contractor)" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:20:20 -0400
- Acceptlanguage: en-US
- Thread-topic: [Fed-Talk] WWDC June 7-11; Mac OS X de-emphasized; Enterprise sessions missing
On Apr 28, 2010, at 8:15 PM, Scott Jackson wrote:
>To say Microsoft is going to pull from Apple is an absurd notion to even consider.<
Internet Explorer. Microsoft rode the Mac to commanding marketshare, gutted Netscape (with our help), and then killed IE when OS X debuted. Office 6. How many years was it before Office 98 shipped, and what happened in the meantime? It has happened before and it could happen again.
But. The death of IE begat Safari and WebKit. Most people miss this connection, but Safari begat Firefox. The "death" of Office begat Keynote which begat iWork. WebKit begat the iPhone and iPhone OS, and the iPhone begat the iPad -- all as a direct result of Microsoft not taking development of its Mac browser business seriously.
I don't recall Adobe ever pulling its software from the Mac platform. To do so would be patently ludicrous because, and I have a LOT of insight into this given who I support, designers would never move to Windows. Point blank. It didn't happen in the transition from Mac OS 9 to OS X, and it wouldn't happen as a result of this little spat Adobe and Apple are having over Flash. Adobe knows who butters its bread. Professional designers, design houses, and schools of design have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build workflows around the Macintosh. As strong as Apple is now, there is absolutely no way they'd throw all that away and start over just because Adobe is having a temper tantrum.
Besides: what do you think would happen if Adobe did decide to kill its Mac products? Can you say hostile takeover by Apple with money from the petty cash drawer? I thought you could.
>Two examples of why Adobe will not pull from Mac. Remember Quark or do you remember AVID? Yeah both companies are still around, but their arrogant missteps to not support the Mac OS was fatal. Both applications lost dominance. Quark didn't adopt Mac OS X quick enough and they went from being a 70 to 80 percent leader for Desktop Publishing to a secondary has been. AVID made its move to Windows and Jobs ask them to stay on the Mac. AVID didn't and Apple bought, and further developed Final Cut Pro. Now Final Cut dominates the industry. Quark and AVID are the ones who are fading into non-existence.<
That's not the reason why Adobe won and Quark lost. Adobe beat Quark yes because InDesign was a first-mover on OS X. But the real reason is QuarkXpress used to cost upwards of $1k retail and came with onerous licensing restrictions. You had to buy it alongside Photoshop and Illustrator, which together cost about as much, so back in the day you were spending at least $2k on software AFTER you paid top dollar to Apple for the hardware to run it.
Along came InDesign, and Adobe started practically giving that away with sales of Photoshop and Illustrator, and subsequently bundled all three of these programs together under the CS moniker for about the price of what you had to pay for Xpress alone. Early versions of InDesign sucked ass, but it got better and better as it aged. Eventually it progressed to the point of parity with the still-tied-to-classic Xpress, and the question became why would I pay extra for Xpress (and the treat of dealing with Quark's legendarily horrific customer "support") when I could just use InDesign which I got "free" alongside Photoshop and Illustrator? Yes I have to learn a whole new design app, but I've got a head start because its interface is very similar to Photoshop, and I can configure it to work like Xpress if I want it to.
That's why Quark is near death. Has nothing to do with pulling support for the Mac. Avid definitely died because it killed Mac support, no argument there.
>To say OS X is done or if fading is kind of ridiculous. They are gaining more and more users, switchers and Apple is still aggressively tuning OS X. Snow Leopard was just the beginning of unleashing the true power what this OS can do for hardware and software. Future updates are going open up the world to the new way of achieving those goals. If anything Apple isn't one to sit idle on anything. It took 10 years to build a killer OS. Do you seriously think they are done? LOL! They just built a rocket and now Apple is getting ready to go beyond our galaxy.<
>I will bet that Apple will even have 40 to 50 percent market share when it comes to desktop/laptop OS's within 10 years.<
How can OS X die when it's the basis of iPhone OS? The desktop version of OS X isn't getting that much attention -- right now -- because Mac sales are growing exponentially, Apple's preoccupied with touch, and Snow Leopard is still in elementary school. Don't think all the innovation that's going on in the touch arena isn't going to be (or indeed, hasn't already been) backported to the desktop.
I firmly believe iPad and the entire touch universe are the future of computing, but Apple will continue to support the laptop/desktop mode for as long as there's money to be made -- or so long as it doesn't impede the development and growth of touch computing. We've got decades to go before we get to the point where a designer can do on an iPad what they can do on a desktop with a tablet attached. By the time we get to that point, the Mac will have evolved into something we can't even conceive today. Who, other than the visionaries behind Star Trek, could possibly have envisioned the iPhone in 1990?
--
Jerry L. Blackmon II <email@hidden<mailto:email@hidden>>
Senior Systems Administrator
Open Technology Group (Contractor)
OITO, Bureau of Engraving and Printing
"The more I learn about computers, the more I like my pencil." -- Susan Katz
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