Apple To Drop Mac OS X In Favour Of Windows
Apple To Drop Mac OS X In Favour Of Windows: “Ahhh, I’m perpetuating the machine! That John Dvorak may be whack, but he knows how to get a click. See? Here’s another one!“
(Via MacSlash.)
Back when I was like . . . 15, John Dvorak was sort of the “cool” PC Magazine columnist that I read, but really I much preferred some of the other writers. Dvorak can be a fun read, but he’s hard to take seriously. His latest schtick, now that Apple is not collapsing like it was supposed to, is that Apple is going to give up its software to run Windows. “Apple has always said it was a hardware company, not a software company.”
Balderdash.
If Apple is anything, it’s neither married to the concept of being a hardware nor a software company. Apple is concerned, as can be inferred from many of their public statements, with the total user experience. That’s why the Apple retail stores are so thoughtfully designed to showcase the Apple product specifically. That’s why Apple packaging is just so. That’s why the hardware is a joy to look at and the software is intimately married to that hardware, and that hardware alone.
Apple would no more move to Windows and abandon the Mac OS platform than they would keep the Mac OS and move to Dell hardware. Neither makes sense from the standpoint that Apple wants to maintain control of the user experience, both physical and cerebral.
The idea that Apple could develop a UI to overlay Windows is risible, for two main reasons. Does John not use Windows? One of the strengths of Apple’s OS right now is that it alone can claim to deliver the power of UNIX with the ease of a polished, consumer-grade front-end. Certainly Linux can’t, not yet.
UNIX is still greatly desirable. Despite a couple of recent proof-of-concept hacks, the platform is still largely free of malware developers interest. It’s still compatible, largely, with large numbers of programs and portions of code written for the scientific and academic communities.
And John ignores Microsoft’s role in this. Does it really suit MS’s interest, while arguing still with the EU over it’s status as a monopoly, to lose its one completely credible competitor? Not to mention that MS has a long, long history of allowing access to the OS for third-party developers. . . to a point, and no further. Apple definitely would not be happy with that arrangement.
So thanks, John. It’s a cute “What if?” scenario. But I’m not going to hold my breath, and neither should you.
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computers, Windows, software, Microsoft, Apple, technology, John Dvorak
