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Apple Watch: No, Apple Isn't Getting Out of the Macintosh Business
Thursday, 2004 May 27 - 6:00 pm
Apple's internal re-org has prompted some columnists to speculate that Apple plans to exit the personal computer market, and focus solely on the iPod. Where do people get this stuff?

Apple recently created a separate iPod division within the company, led by former VP of hardware engineering Jon Rubinstein. This led to speculation that Apple would become an iPod-only company, or perhaps a consumer electronics company, and discontinue the Macintosh. (Hmm, that's funny: when Microsoft created the Macintosh Business Unit for producing Mac software, no one speculated they would discontinue Windows.)

I think columnists have been predicting the death of the Macintosh for so long that they're just itching to be proven right one of these days, and they'll reach for anything that points in that direction. But frankly, the idea that Apple would kill its number one cash cow is ridiculous. There's something about the Macintosh that people seem to forget: it gives Apple an immediate and exclusive target market of tens of millions of people, for any product they introduce. If the iPod and the iTunes Music Store had been introduced by another company, without Mac compatibility, would they have been such a big deal? Maybe, but probably not. The first million customers for each product were probably folks who had Macs at home, who bought into the products because of their Mac association.

It's brilliant market strategy; why don't people get it? Apple has a place they can play with home-field advantage. No other PC vendor has that. Nothing compels folks to buy Dell peripherals with their Dell computer. People say lots of bad things about proprietary products, but sometimes it's smart business. Apple, after all, is still around, while the rest of the PC industry is littered with corpses. It wasn't too long ago that people were crowning Gateway the king of the PC world... but now they need bargain-basement partner eMachines just to keep themselves afloat.

The other thing people forget: Apple still makes most of its money selling Macs, and by a wide margin over anything else, including the iPod.

Oh, and to dispel the other continuing bit of nonsense: Apple is still not planning on switching to Intel processors. Ha!
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Posted by Ken in: techwatch

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