4742 My colleague over at MacOpinion, Marc Zeedar, has posted a commentary today entitled Apple Windows, in which he declaims:

"I've read a lot of nutty things written about Apple, but this silly blog post from a guy named Kingsley-Hughes takes the booby prize. The author posits that seeing that Apple's doing so well financially now, what the company needs to do to 'get to the next level' is start manufacturing Windows-based PCs."

That would be ZNet blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, who says that:

"If Apple really wants to rock investors and take profits to the next level, it should start offering Windows-based Macs. Profits would skyrocket, Apple would enter an existing market and shake it up, investors would be happy because Apple’s market share would explode and everyone would be happy."

"Wow," says Marc Zeedar, "This is wrong on so many levels I hardly know where to begin...."

"Apple is succeeding because they are not a regular PC maker, not in spite of it.

"Another even bigger reason Apple has no interest in the Windows market is that Windows PCs are a commodity - Apple targets a different market: namely people who understand value and are willing to pay a premium for a superior product..... It'd be like BMW trying to compete with Hyundai."

I'm inclined to agree with Marc. The last time Apple tried going conventional - former Apple CEO Gil Amelio's foray into Mac OS cloning back in the mid-'90s, it nearly scuppered the company. Consumers quickly discovered that they could have the sublime Mac OS and run it on cheaper, and in some cases arguably superior, non-Apple hardware, and abandoned buying Mac systems in droves. They were sensible doing so too. I still have a UMAX SuperMac S-900 that I like better than the rough equivalent (same basic motherboard) Power Mac 9500 my daughter use to. The 9500 dies in an unfortunate wrong voltage scrounged RAM meltdown, but she's still got an S-900 with a Sonnet 350 MHz G3 upgrade card and running OS 10.4 Tiger, although it's just a backup machine these days.

If it were possible (at least without EULA-busting hacking) to run OS X on a garden-variety PC box, I would certainly be tempted myself. I mean, I love my Macs, but just as Hyundai is making some pretty nice rides these days (check out the Santa Fe and Veracruz, for example), not all PC hardware is mediocre. I continue to lust after Acer's AMD-powered Ferrari laptops, and even some Dell laptops are looking not so bad these days, especially at the price.

Here in Canada, even though the Canuck buck hit parity with the greenback seven weeks ago, the cheapest MacBook still sells for Can$1,249.00, even though the Canadian dollar is as I file this column trading at U.S.$1.09, and actually topped $1.10 for a while this morning. That means on the basis of raw exchange rates, the base MacBook should be selling in Canada for 1,006.50, not $1,249.00.

Dell, presumably having decided to pass on some of the exchange rate savings to their Canuck customers, is happy to sell you an Inspiron 1420 with a Core 2 Duo processor, a 14.1-inch display, two gigs of RAM, and a 120 gigabyte hard drive for Can$899.00 Actually, if you’re a real penny-pincher, right now you can get an Inspiron 1520 with a dual-core Pentium, an a 15.4-inch display for Can$749.00, and Dell has even cheaper laptops than that available.

Dell's typically plain-vanilla styling, which is inoffensive, and the generic PC laptop books are mitigated considerably by the machine’s availability in your choice of eight attractive colors. Jet Black with Matte Finish, Alpine White with Gloss Finish, Expresso Brown with Microsatin Finish, Ruby Red with Microsatin Finish, Midnight Blue with Microsatin Finish , Spring Green with Microsatin Finish, Flamingo Pink with Microsatin Finish, and Sunshine Yellow with Microsatin Finish. I think the Expresso Brown one is especially classy-looking. I would be sorely tempted if I could (legally) run Leopard on one of those.

Ans when you tell a non Mac-cognizenti consumer shopper that the best Apple will do on a machine with the same processor, half as much RAM, and a smaller screen than that Core 2 Duo Inspiron is Can$1,250, they just roll their eyes. Dell will sell you a 17-inch display Inspiron 1720 with a 160 gigabyte hard drive for fifty bucks less than that. Apple’s cheapest (only) 17-inch notebook sells for Can$3,099.00.

Nevertheless, Apple is still selling a ton of computers to us Mac OS junkies and gaining market share. In its last fiscal quarter, the company sold more than 2 million Macs, and technology research firm Gartner Inc. reports that Apple now has about 8% of the U.S. PC market, finally, after years of painstaking recovery, climbing back toward the market share the company enjoyed in the pre-clone experiment early '90s.

So Marc Zeedar is right and Kingsley-Hughes is mistaken. Apple is doing just fine and raking in bushels of money selling Mac systems at premium prices. I'll keep buying Macs as long as that's what it takes to keep running the Mac OS, but I'll either hold off my next purchase until Apple Canada passes along some of the exchange-rate windfall, or go grey market cross-border. I may be a fanboy, but I have my limits.



Charles W. Moore

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