Someone should tell John Dvorak that there's more to satire than just being deliberately irritating. Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal drew attention to English society's indifference and cruelty to the Irish poor during the Potato Famine, while Dvorak's recent "modest proposal" of his own — that Apple is about to (and should!) switch to Windows — is just breathtakingly dumb.
Where do I start?
The idea that Apple would ditch its own OS for Microsoft Windows came to me from Yakov Epstein, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University, who wrote to me convinced that the process had already begun.... Epstein made four observations. The first was that the Apple Switch ad campaign was over, and nobody switched. The second was that the iPod lost its FireWire connector because the PC world was the new target audience. Also, although the iPod was designed to get people to move to the Mac, this didn't happen. And, of course, that Apple had switched to the Intel microprocessor.
Um, yeah... Dvorak does know that ad campaigns run for a while and then stop? Also, if nobody is switching, how do you explain this news story? (Or the fact that Macs are attracting computer virus authors for the first time in years?) It's not ad campaigns, stupid — it's iPods that are convincing people.
Another issue for Apple is that the Intel platform is wide open, unlike the closed proprietary system Apple once had full control over. With a proprietary architecture, Apple could tweak the OS for a controlled environment without worrying about the demands of a multitude of hardware add-ons and software subsystems. Windows, as crappy as many believe it to be, actually thrives in this mishmash architecture. Products, old and new, have drivers for Windows above all else. By maintaining its own OS, Apple would have to suffer endless complaints about peripherals that don't work.
Where's he been, 1999? Proprietary OSX may be, but it's based on Unix, which does run on all kinds of things. This fact made moving to the Intel processor much easier. Oh, and Windows is a pain in the frigging butt. I say this as someone who has used both for years. Would I trade it for OS9? Hell no. But I'm much happier with the modern Mac. I love its pretty interface (much calmer and easier on the eyes than garish XP) and the fact I can bring up a terminal window with a click and run all kinds of processes from it.
To preserve the Mac's slick cachet, there is no reason an executive software layer couldn't be fitted onto Windows to keep the Mac look and feel. Various tweaks could even improve the OS itself. From the Mac to the iPod, it's the GUI that makes Apple software distinctive. Apple popularized the modern GUI. Why not specialize in it and leave the grunt work to Microsoft? It would help the bottom line and put Apple on the fast track to real growth.
Um... you can make Windows look like Mac, but it ain't gonna be OSX. It's still the same kludgy mess it was before, with more complexity thrown in just to keep users on their toes.
As someone who believed that the Apple OS x86 could gravitate toward the PC rather than Windows toward the Mac, I have to be realistic. It boils down to the add-ons. Linux on the desktop never caught on because too many devices don't run on that OS. It takes only one favorite gizmo or program to stop a user from changing. Chat rooms are filled with the likes of "How do I get my DVD burner to run on Linux?" This would get old fast at Apple.
Wait, what happened to that argument about Windows being so great because it runs on a mishmash of hardware? So does Linux. So if it all comes down to the support of a single important company, well, Apple is just as good at getting stuff to work as Microsoft. I certainly don't have a problem with my peripherals now.
Apple has always said it was a hardware company, not a software company. Now with the cash cow iPod line, it can afford to drop expensive OS development and just make jazzy, high-margin Windows computers to finally get beyond that five-percent market share and compete directly with Dell, HP, and the stodgy Chinese makers.
Yes, and many of those computer manufacturers are floundering! Remember Gateway? If everybody is selling crap, and you're selling the same old crap, how do you compete? Cute ads didn't save Gateway...
The only fly in the ointment will be the strategic difficulty of breaking the news to the fanatical users. Most were not initially pleased by the switch to Intel's architecture, and this will make them crazy.
""Surprise! New processor! Um, you're gonna have to buy all new versions of your software..." or "Surprise! That computer you just bought? It's obsolete now!" are two things nobody wants to hear. But we've been through it before. As long as it means faster and better computing in the near future, we get over it. "Surprise! You have to use Windows now!" is not the same thing.
Luckily, and what is so exciting about the switch to Intel, is that it's going to be easier than every to run Windows in emulation mode. Virtual PC will no longer be so slow. Maybe WINE will get ported over from Linux.
Enough time wasted on Dvorak. If he loves Bill Gates so much, why doesn't he just marry him?
Truly, he is the David Brooks of the computing world.
