What If Apple Did Sell Macs with Windows Pre-installed?
Apple may make jokes about Windows problems with viruses and other malware, but it has realized that the Microsoft fortress can be breached most easily with a Trojan Horse. And that is precisely what Apple intends to use to break through market barriers.
A pretend rumor (not surprisingly on the domain pretendpundit.com which redirects to PageOne Blog) circulated a couple of weeks back that Apple were doing a deal with Microsoft to sell Macs with Windows on them. Yeah, we all had a good laugh at that one. But maybe, just maybe, it’s not as dumb as it sounds.
Let’s consider a couple of things.
Who are the most popular PC vendors in the corporate market place? Dell and HP (IBM used to be among them).
Now, what do those three have in common? They are all what are called “tier-one” vendors. Tier-one vendors are known for superior product and service, and longevity (which will have built a recognizable and trustable brand). The easiest way to identify tier-one vendors is by who’s buying. The corporate world has for years bought Dell, HP/Compaq or IBM. Throw Toshiba in on the laptop market but the rest have been bit players in the corporate world.
Some people will protest that Dell doesn’t have a superior product. With four years experience of Dell at the height of its popularity in the first half of this decade, I can’t fault its hardware. That said, I was not buying entry-level home PCs. I can’t speak for the quality of Dell home PCs.
Add Apple?
Apple comfortably meets the requirements of a tier-one vendor. But until recently, it couldn’t compete in the tier-one market—the corporate world—because it didn’t have a Windows PC.
What if the Pretend Pundit/PageOne blog was right? Personally, that’s one snowball I don’t think will be tossed around the nether world, but let’s hypothesize. What if Apple did start selling Macs with Windows pre-installed and supported?
If that happened, IT Managers would consider them—provided Apple’s salesmen hit the road. So you might see a whole office kitted out with Macs yet never ever running OS X.
You might think that is bad. Really bad. But I might disagree. It’s good. Really good.
The Trojan Mac
Let’s face it: the corporate desk is going to have some vendor’s PC sitting on it and running Windows. So how could it harm the Mac’s existing user-base if Macs running Windows sat on corporate desks? That is a market in which Apple has no other way of getting worthwhile sales. (Anyone who thinks Macs with OS X are going to wipe out Windows in the corporate office… well… have I’ve got a used car for you.)
Where Apple wins though is in the exposure.
Imagine: Joe Bloggs (who doesn’t actually have a blog) sitting at his office desk, pondering what computer to buy, looks around and sees a sea of Macs. Macs are ok, he thinks, the office buys them…
This thought process was fundamental to Dell conquering the home market. I know of so many people who bought Dells as their home computer because that’s what they used at work. Dell’s became ubiqutous. That exposure created trust and security for the Mr. Bloggs of the world.
The IT Manager would set up the Mac so Windows boots without OS X ever getting a chance. But when Apple ships a Mac to the home user, even if Windows is pre-installed, OS X will be the default OS.
A lot of Joes won’t be able to resist. They will experiment with that other OS sitting on their shiny new Mac; they’ll tinker with iPhoto and Garageband. And they’ll be back. More and more often. Let’s say Joe tries to make a movie in Windows MovieMaker. It’s okay, but he wonders what iMovie would be like…
So despite in this imaginary scenario of Macs running Windows in the corporate office, it gets more Macs sold to home users, and over time, more and more people using OS X. It snowballs.
In the words of Professor John Frink “Ingle-hey, mwa-hey!”
So Apple selling Macs with Windows on them may not be as insane as first thought.
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Comments
If you are going to insult someone that essentially AGREED with you on almost every point you are going to find the few people that ever agree with you are going to see less people agreeing with you.
If my dream was to have everyone agree with me, you’d have an excellent point. However, I’m a non-kool-aid drinkin’ Mac user on a Mac fan site, so it would have to remain a dream in any case. But I’m not so sure you were agreeing with me, even conceding that I misread your comment.
My point is that PCs are a less expensive solution for the corporate world. Period. They may not be the right solution for everyone, and Macs have a niche to fill absolutely, but both long and short term, PCs are cheaper. The only way they aren’t is to make a LOT of dubious assumptions about both Macs and PCs.
I’ve yet to see any real hard evidence either way, but in my experience, the “less than 2 years” lifespan is an exaggerated anecdotal worst-case scenario. But I don’t work where you work, so who knows what your peeps or your IT dept are doing. While I realize that some PCs will die within that time (and so will some Macs), is that REALLY the average?
In the firms I’ve seen and the computers I’ve been around, 2 years is the MINIMUM one can expect, and most last much longer. In fact, many people I know hold on to their PCs long after they could have upgraded to a much faster system.
Windows PCs are notorious for obsoleting themselves as time goes on.
Remember when you first brought that XP baby home. It was a screamer and only needed 256MB of main memory to run Office comfortably.
After a short 1-2 years of normal use and what comes with using Windows - app installs/uninstalls/upgrades plus the swarm of viruses/trojans/worms/bots/spies - along the way and then it seems that XP screamer is now barely whining, performance-wise.
Why? It is because the fundamental Windows design and in particular, win32 and winx64 even. It is called the Registry. It is a centralized database that the system and most win32-compliant apps use for their settings and other operating parameters.
Even when you are not installing applications. These installed applications constantly insert entries in the Registry and before you realize it, the system slows down because it has to keep track and do housekeeping on the Registry now and then.
This got nothing to do with what hardware you have. You may have a cheapo eMachines or a high-end Dell and will have this problem sooner or later.
Now, some PC egos will deny this is not a problem but a feature of Windows. Go tell that to those virus/worm writers and DDoS spawners. They know the Registry and how to manipulate it. After all, it is the system’s (kernel) home and how convenient it is to hack.
Average users have no idea of the Registry even existing. It is transparent to them. But they will notice the eventual sluggishnes that is sure to ensue after repeated Kazaa or Limewire downloads-installs cycle. Sounds familiar? Of course, because every young adults I have seen use a computer haphazardly. That malwares do not exist and that Windows is impenetrable. Kind of like themselves. They feel and think invincibility.
So, in the end, a PC over 2-3 years of average use will become candidate for the Tuesday trash pickup or to the Goodwill Collection Center. Then Joe and Jane Average will trot down to the nearest Best Buy store and starts the 2-3 year cycle all over again.
Recommendation: 2-3 year old eMachines should be automatically dumped anyway for they emit toxic foul odor after collecting garbage from its egotistic user. heh…heh…
Cheers!