Wild and Crazy Marketshare Idea

[dricci]

I had this idea for instant marketshare.

Just follow along with me for a second. What if Apple ported OS X to Intel (don't scream yet) and gave it away for free? Not just giving it away for free, but putting a copy of it for FREE at every Windows user doorstep. I'm betting that a large number would install it. How do you think AOL got started?

This is a wild idea, and this would mean total profit loss for Apple, but they'd get instant marketshare!

Crazy idea, eh?

Well, maybe it doesn't have to go to that extreme. Maybe they could buy list of all the Dell and Gateway customers and send them propaganda mail. Like a free interactive Digital Hub/Mac OS X demo tour CD that they could pop in their wintel and see the advantages of a Mac.

Other than looking worse than Nazis and AOL, I'm sure it'd introduce a lot of people to the light. It could sort of be like the on-screen demos all the demo units in the Apple stores run.

Ok, it's 8 AM (really only 7). I need more coffee. Crazy ideas are forming.

 

[symphonix]

I don't think you're crazy. I'll even ask you to watch these small children.

Okay, to be perfectly honest, I couldn't see any way that that could work out well for Apple. Apple has a large base of loyal customers, probably the largest in their industry, and they are very sensitive about Apple's behaviour. A lot of us switched to Apple to escape the horrible world of PC/Windows computing, where the market is driven purely by price and has little room for quality. Others would resent that they had spent money on OS X and Mac hardware which PC users were getting for free.
What if it was a really high-quality port and worked as well on PC as on Apple hardware? Then users would have little motivation to move to Apple.
On the other hand, if the port was unreliable, or lacking in any way, then it would reflect badly on Apple.

As for the idea of direct-mail bombardment, you obviously attended the General Howitzer school of Marketing. People resent mail outs, and they resent the idea that companies they have no dealings with have their details even more.
You should realise that Apple has a niche market that is steadily growing, and that the only way to keep this niche market is to maintain the extremely high-quality of their products, to ensure that information is easily available to prospective users, and to support their customers well. Then and only then will PC users consider switching over.

Go and get some coffee, dricci, and some fresh air.

 

[ulrik]

What would be the advantage for Apple? They earn money by selling hardware. So, they dish out a few million dollars that 70% of the world uses their OS, but still only 5 % buy their hardware...it has to run good on x86 machines so that people stick to it, and if it runs good, why should people buy Mac hardware if they can get other hardware at the same speed for a smaller amount of money, also running OS X?

Marketshare only helps you if this marketshare also produces money.

As much as I'd like OS X to be the main OS of the branche, I don't think this might actually help Apple!

Don't forget: Apple also has to provide service for OS X, another point where they would have to invest money.

 

[xoot]

How about not porting it to x86 machines? How about just running a Mac emulator? That would encourage people to buy Apple hardware and software because the emulator is very slow on most machines. Any flaws in my idea?

 

[ulrik]

Yes...let's say "a few".

Why should anyone be impressed by a slow OS? Even if you tell them that it runs faster on a Mac, they will never even think about switching.

I really hope you ment that as a joke...

 

[scruffy]

Port to x86.

Great, now you support a processor. To make it actually work, you need to support the whole computer. So just write drivers for every bastardly mutant ethernet, video, sound, SCSI, USB, Firewire, MPEG encoder, RAID, and (what have I left out? A lot) card PC users might have in their computers.

Microsoft is a huge company, the Windows team must be five or ten times Apple's OS team, and yet OS X is infinitely better than Windows in a dozen different ways. Why? Because M$ has no control over hardware. That means they have to maintain drivers for ungodly millions of devices. Apple chooses to put only well designed, good quality devices in Macs, and write drivers for only those devices they support. It means they can get on with writing a good OS, rather than preventing the existing one from falling apart altogether.