Apple is neither a 'hardware' company, nor a 'software' company - nor even a hardware-and-software company.
It is a 'platform' company. Which is why, MS, though not makers of hardware - to any great extent - are still direct competitors of Apple - and why referring to windows systems as 'wintel' makes sense. Hardware may or may not be an essential part of a platform. Oracles, Sun, and SAP are also 'platform' vendors - in different market sectors. Apple's platform development strategy has been less 'symbiotic' than other vendors - including MS. OS X's incorporation of Unix has been one of many smaller steps away from 'owning' everything. (I don't recall seeing an Apple logo on a hard-drive for quite some time.) The requirements of developing and marketing a successful platform are similar, but not identical to developing and marketing an operating system, or hardware architecture. A platform has to establish a boundary for a set of related technologies, which defines a domain of benefits and functionality exclusive to that platform. (It can be a porous boundary, and for many reasons has to be. But not to the extent that crossing it incurs no cost at all.) Apple's own catch-all term for it's current platform is as a 'hub' for the 'new digital lifestyle'. This is a new platform - not simply an extension of the old Apple platform. This domain has 'colonies' like X-Serve, which to my mind are expeditions into 'enemy' territory, the long-term viability of which will depend on the success of the expedition. Windows on the other hand, sums up the emphasis of its 'platform' in the 'zero-degrees of separation' jargon. Which is why .Net and .Mac are not competing strategies. .Net is intended to be a rallying-call for business information exchange, while .Mac is meant to be the rallying-call for personal information networks. My 'guess' is that most PERL hackers would most likely be living in the 'colonies' of Apple's current platform. And if not 'living' there at the very least frequently crossing it's borders into other domains. If you are one of these frontiersmen, you are most definitely NOT the person the current Apple 'platform' was conceived and developed for. As an increment of the operating system component of the platform OS X.2 is less than it is when understood an increment in the platform itself. And that Apple is charging for it, indicates that they finally understand that the platform rather than it's constituent parts, is their core product, and therefore a renewable revenue stream.
