Posted on 01/25/2004 8:02:23 PM PST by Extremely Extreme Extremist
Apple embracing Big Brother; Revolution wanes 20 years after famous '1984' ad
By Bob Keefe
Cox News Service
Saturday, January 24, 2004
It was billed as the start of a revolution. And it was.
Twenty years ago this month, with the shadowy "1984" Super Bowl commercial that would become advertising legend, Apple Computer Inc. introduced the world to Macintosh.
Marketed as "a computer for the rest of us," Macintosh promised to change forever the IBM Corp.-dominated world of computing that was just starting to take shape. And undoubtedly, the stylish machine did change computing for everyone who now uses a mouse or a point-and-click graphical interface.
These days, many Macintosh die-hards are just as disdainful of the conventional Windows-based computing world today as they were about IBM in 1984. But while Apple still distances itself from the mainstream computing world with both its philosophy and its award-winning designs, the company is also starting to join it.
"Twenty years is a long time," said Mike Murray, who was the 29-year-old chief of marketing at Apple when it launched its signature product. "People mature, gain in wisdom and smooth off the rough edges in that amount of time."
Apple, he said, is no different.
Nine months after it introduced its ground-breaking iPod portable music player, Apple rolled out a Windows version of the device for the 96 percent of computer users who don't use the Macintosh operating system. Sales soared among PC users who otherwise wouldn't touch an Apple product, helping turn iPod into the best-selling MP3 music player.
Last October, joking that "hell froze over," Apple founder and chief executive Steve Jobs went a step farther, introducing a Windows version of Apple's highly successful iTunes online music store software. Today iTunes is the market leader in legal music downloads, with an estimated 70 percent of the market.
This month, Apple made another surprising foray into the Windows world. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it announced a first-of-its-kind agreement with Hewlett-Packard Co., a company that Apple unsuccessfully sued, along with Microsoft Corp., for patent infringement back in 1988.
Under the agreement, HP will sell its own version of the iPod. All of HP's consumer computers will also come pre-installed with iTunes software, winning Apple a coveted spot on the desktop screens produced by the world's second-biggest PC company and giving it a major entry point into the Windows computing world.
"Jobs has become much more pragmatic with age," said Tim Bajarin, president of technology research firm Creative Strategies Inc. "Even though he still has a very strong personality, I think he's learned a lot.
"He has learned that what it takes to make a company successful sometimes means making concessions," Bajarin said.
Indeed, Apple's recent moves, though perhaps painful to some Mac aficionados, are earning it profits and accolades on Wall Street.
Earlier this month, the company reported quarterly net earnings of $63 million, compared with a net loss of $8 million a year earlier. Revenues in its fiscal first quarter hit $2 billion, a four-year high.
The company's stock also has risen sharply. Apple shares currently hover around $22, not far from their 52-week high of about $25.
"We think Apple has gotten its act together in focusing on core markets, building a mature management team, and most important innovating again," Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. analyst Steve Milunovich wrote in a recent research report. The deal with HP, he wrote, should help continue the company's momentum.
Apple declined to make Jobs or other company executives available for interviews.
Publicly, at least, Jobs and other Apple executives downplay the Windows moves. In announcing iTunes for Windows last October, Jobs joked about it, calling it the best software ever to run on Windows.
When HP chairman Carly Fiorina announced the watershed iPod and iTunes deal, Apple executives weren't even on stage or around to talk about it.
And while some analysts think the HP agreement might open up new lines of Windows-based digital entertainment avenues for Apple — for home movie or picture editing software and equipment, for instance — company officials don't like to discuss that.
"Apple viewed this as a tremendous opportunity to have a strategic partnership . . . with a great company that could market our iPod and our iTunes music store to a greater number of customers worldwide," Apple's chief financial officer, Fred Anderson, said in a recent conference call with analysts. "I wouldn't speculate on any other opportunities like that in the future."
Apple is also learning that winning converts today isn't as easy as it was back in its computer revolution of 1984.
Two years ago, Apple launched an aggressive advertising campaign it called "Switch" that was supposed to convince legions of Windows users to move to Macintosh. The campaign, which cost an estimated $75 million, didn't work very well.
According to tech research firm Gartner Inc., Apple's U.S. market share actually declined slightly last year, to about 2.9 percent from 3.3 percent a year earlier. Among big computer companies, troubled Gateway Inc. was the only other PC maker to see U.S. sales decline, according to Gartner.
Earlier this month, Apple said Macintosh sales rose 12 percent in its most recent quarter. But the fall in market share indicates that it's current Mac users — not switchers — who are buying the Macs as replacements or additional machines, said analyst Bajarin.
But some say Jobs and other company officials have learned one key thing, that fighting the Windows crowd relegated Apple to a niche position in the computing business. The recent moves, they say, make clear that it doesn't want to make the same mistake again in the emerging world of digital entertainment.
"Steve has moved on — he's in another place now," said Andy Cunningham, a public relations consultant who helped oversee the 1984 Macintosh launch.
"I don't think it's about marketing to Windows users or Mac users anymore," she said. "The computer (operating system) is irrelevant now."
Next weekend, during Super Bowl XXXVIII in Houston, Apple will once again launch a major promotion that it is billing as revolutionary.
This one, 20 years after the commercial that transformed Apple forever, touts a promotion in which Apple and Pepsi-Cola North America are giving away 100 million songs that can be downloaded from the iTunes music store.
And this time, both Mac and Windows users can participate.
Is Apple really better than Windows? I have Windows XP on an HP Pavilion 524w. I'm seriously considering switching and dumping Windows. I can't connect to MSN half the time and I get stupid Windows Messenger popping up all the time (I tried to disable it but then I can't log onto the Internet).
Any FReepers want to give me some pointers, go for it!
I got a big kick out of this line - "for the 96 percent of computer users who don't use the Macintosh"!
And *I* just spent the last four days exploring the intricacies of the PC's MBR (Master Boor Record) and how that ties in with the EZ-BIOS HD LBA (Logical Block Addressing) INT13 'handler' - a a result of a *wrong* move on my part while bringing a new disk online ... needless to say, I can now edit HD sectors with the best of 'them' ...
it was about Apple trying to make a profit... big whoop.
I have used apples, and they are fine too. Best bet if your a one pc user is stick with what you have and learn all you can about it, work with what makes it easy for you to do what you want with a computer - in my case that means a variety of things, but windows or mac will do you fine.
I have owned a variety of Macintosh products. I occasionally need to use PC's. From what I can tell, Windows *still* does not have the ease of use and transparency of the Mac interface. Macs are much more stable. If you own a PC you are forced to waste time on arcane operating system BS that has nothing to do with your real work. On Macs it is usually much more clear what the function of each file is. And there is no need for "uninstall" programs.
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