When a major international report claimed Dell should start making computers for Apple last year, a blaze of controversy swept across the Internet. Face it, when you piss off Mac fans you’re playing with fire.
By Jack Kapica, Digital Journal’s Ranter-in-Chief
Admit it. Apple got it right — Mac computers are the future. But not for the reasons most people think.
Over the years, Microsoft and Apple have carved out two directions in our approach to computing: computers that need constant care and computers that don’t. That is the only essential difference defining the mule-headed loyalties each platform commands. All other issues — from design to navigation — boil down to personal preferences and are used only to inflame debates.
Last year, global IT consultancy Gartner opened a new front in the silly war between the platforms by issuing a report bluntly titled “Apple Should License the Mac to Dell.” It suggested Apple Computer get out of the hardware business entirely and hand it over to Dell, which could make a much cheaper Mac. By concentrating on software, Apple could then gain as much as 20 per cent of the total PC market share, Gartner argued.
The Mac community’s response was predictable, as swift as it was angry. This came in the middle of a misguided Apple advertising campaign (“Hello, I’m a Mac.” Pause. “And I’m a PC”), which served no purpose other than to further polarize brand loyalty.
The implication of the ads is supposed to be that Macs are hip while PCs are woefully inadequate. The ads don’t work for one basic dramatic reason: The actor playing the PC (John Hodgman) is far funnier and more sympathetic as a dry-witted dork than the cool, unshaven kid who belongs in an OK Go video (Justin Long). Hodgman, after all, is a regular on TV’s hippest offering, The Daily Show, while Long’s film career is bruised by roles in gems like Jeepers Creepers and Accepted.
These ads are important in the context of Gartner’s argument because Apple has poured a lot of money into them, hoping to pump up its cool image. But when Gartner suggested that Apple’s core business is software, it pushed the debate off the hipper-than-thou road to the path to pure financial pragmatism.
Gartner is probably right in assuming that Dell could make a cheaper box, but that would be missing the point. Since it was founded, Apple has worked on the premise that the computer and its software are inseparable — you don’t really want to open your box and meddle with its innards, the way Microsoft-based computers almost demand.
Dell’s core business boils down to two kinds of products: a low-end line, made with a number of factory-second parts to reduce cost; and a line of sturdy, reliable desktop and laptop PCs with pricier components for corporate users. Gartner’s paper suggests that Dell could use its corner-cutting approach to build Macs, a horrifying thought to die hard Mac addicts.
If Dell were to go the high-end route to build sturdy and reliable Macintosh computers, there wouldn’t be a price difference significant enough to warrant such a move. The only machine Dell makes that can be comparable to Macs is the XPS, which sells for more than $2,000 — not much of a savings. In this sense, Dell is perhaps the worst manufacturer for Gartner to have suggested as the potential maker of a cheaper Mac.
Apple has not only poured a lot of money into its product design (iPod, anyone?), but also into the components of its Mac boxes, ensuring they were optimized for the operating system tied to them.
That’s what priced the Macs higher than Windows computers, and Gartner assumes the price differential is the major reason for Apple’s inability to regain the more than 20 per cent market share it once enjoyed.
Gartner is not entirely wrong in arguing that with its economies of scale, Dell could probably create a decent and competitively priced Mac box. This argument would be entirely on target if one condition were met: that the computer industry had reached maturity and price was the only stumbling block left to Apple’s future success.
The industry is still far from maturity. I define maturity not by industry economics or the saturation of the market. I define it by the way we, the users, accept new developments in technology.
We’re quickly losing interest in what’s inside our computers, the sane way we no longer care about the individual parts inside our TV. iPod sales skyrocketed, especially among the non-Apple crowd, because the public preferred the tinker-free experience promised by the MP3 player.
The same is becoming true of computers: We know what we want to accomplish, and we should get machines that allow us to do that. Because the industry has yet to reach maturity, we still need to secure our systems from malicious attacks, and we need to keep upgrading video cards and audio components. None of the computers out there can deliver that while promising we won’t turn green with envy in six months — when everything we just bought becomes obsolete.
Each machine Apple has made in the past 25 years has promised that it won’t need so many piecemeal upgrades. Apple’s machines have always been based on the notion that Macs are a means to an end, not the end in itself.
I don’t doubt Dell could make a box for Apple, but what’s not certain is whether Dell could make a Mac that holds the promise of a complete experience. I don’t think Gartner even got that point.
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This article is part of Digital Journal’s printed edition.
