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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1826
Apple Takes All the "Huge Risks"
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
March 15th 2003
Columnist says that even the power supply swap for the Power Macs is an "incredible
step to take" when Cupertino wasn't compelled to do it.
Analysts have not been positive in their rating of Apple in recent months. As a
result, share prices have been driven down, as the guys running the pension funds ask
"Where's the growth? Where's the market share?"
Perhaps they should say, as Tom Yager at InfoWorld does, feel the innovation. Yager
argues that analysts have misjudged and underappreciated Apple's value to the tech
industry on several counts. More than anyone, he says, it's Apple that takes huge
risks as it seeks market share and mind share through technical innovation.
First, Yager says that while its competitors are inconsistent in their marketing
messages, Apple is on target and has stuck with its key themes: innovation; the Mac as
the centerpiece of the digital hub; iApps to service that digital hub; and high levels
of integration with peripherals like the iPod and Sony-Ericsson phones.
MS's purchase of VPC? Not that important, says Yager. Apple is focussing all of its
efforts on OS X. It's not trying to pretend Macs can be either software or hardware
x86 boxes as well. They're OS X boxes. Nothing more. Nothing less. That differentiates
the product from the commodified PCs out there.
Analysts, says Yager, also think Apple's early adoption of 802.11g - Airport Extreme -
was premature. Time will tell. The financial soothsayers have also criticized X11,
Safari, XServe's IDE storage, the PB-17, iLife and .mac.
Not that Apple's doing everything correctly. Yager argues that the company could do
more to get hardware developers to write drivers for OS X, and developer training and
documentation needs a rejig.
Analysis: OS X and this new Mac platform is something which will take time to develop.
And the developers will come as X gains momentum. It's not as if the original Mac took
off straightaway either. But by adopting industry standards - unlike the original 128K
- the Mac can talk to a huge number of devices: FireWire and USB scanners and
printers; DVD-Rs (even +RW), flash memory, any IDE drives - the list goes on.
Frankly, the analysts are wrong. $14 or so for Apple stock is morw representative of
the general distrust of tech stocks than a particularly gloomy appraisal of Apple's
prospects. The company's sitting on a pile of cash, continues to release innovative
products as its competitors market me-too, conservative designs, and PowerPC 970's
around the corner. Apple's future? It can't come fast enough.
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