Mac.Ars is back with another great issue. The August 18th edition discusses Apple's focus, and whether it might hurt the company. I differ with the author on this point:
Is this strategy of becoming all things to all people a good one? Can an IT purchasing manager take a company seriously which sells singles and servers? No other PC manufacturer is reaching into as many markets at the same time as Apple which sells blade servers, high-end UNIX workstations, commodity PCs, laptops, mp3 players, operating systems, productivity applications, webcams, WebObjects, and music (Dell perhaps comes close, but most of their offerings are truly third party).No other PC manufacturer? How about Sony and Microsoft? Granted, Microsoft is not a PC manufacturer (depending on how one views the XBox), and I don't believe that Sony has entered the server market (or is even a serious contender for IT purchases, with the possible exception of Vaio laptops). But both companies have far reaching product lines.
Sony is not just a reseller of music - it has its own labels (including a fairly well respected classical label), and their own movie studio. It sells robot dogs, home and car stereos. And there are also some of the best looking non-macintosh computers out there. Hell - I've even been tempted by certain Vaio desktops recently. Other Japanese companies have an even broader range of product offerings - some companies are happy to supply you with a violin, a motorcycle, a synthesizer, and a wave runner, all under the same brand.
And then there's Microsoft. The same company that wants to sell you numerous editions of Windows Server 2003 also wants to sell you (or your children) interactive Barney. (All jokes about big dumb beasts who continually insult the intelligence of their intended audience have already been made, thank you). Microsoft makes BARNEY dolls and expects to be taken seriously? I mean - it's BARNEY! Maybe they're just trying to dumb up their next generation of users. And I say all of this out of pure contempt for Barney. Microsoft... I actually have no major beef with them at present. But Barney... Ugh. Turning away from that, however, and looking at Microsoft's other interests and holdings, we find not only media outlets, but they've recently started to dabble in legal digital music selling as well.
My point, up to here, is that it's not uncommon for a company to have a wide product offering. The Mac OS X platform is just as viable and flexible as Windows (NT based Windows) in being a solid consumer level operating system as well as a server one. And jokes about security concerns in Windows need not be said - there are millions of unpatched Linux Apache systems out there that are as exploitable as Windows. Even the Free Software Foundation has been hacked recently.
Of course, Microsoft has the fact that they're Microsoft going for them when IT is considering purchases. And the free/open source alternatives have their price advantages (real and fabricated) over the Mac platform. But does it hurt Apple to have a wide focus? I say no.
There was only one time recently where I believe their focus slipped, and that was with the introduction of the Power Mac G4 Cube. At the time, it just didn't fit into Apple's product matrix, and struggled to find its audience. I know what Apple was trying to do with that system - they were trying to do the equivalent of the higher end bookshelf stereo system - small expensive stereos that sell to a certain audience because they look and sound better than boom boxes (which are hideously ugly these days). I don't think the market really existed at the time to sustain it as a product line. But curiously, the 17 inch iMac of today (as well as the above mentioned Viao W series from Sony) sell in the same range and target a similar aesthetic. Somehow, Apple's product line has rounded itself out enough to allow the high end iMac to sit and sell where it does, while the cube could not. (And - it's been voiced many times that Apple should re-introduce the Cube. Not as a high end machine, but as a low end one - as an iMac or eMac without the built in display. It could sell now for between $400-$500 and target people who already have displays). But at its release, the Cube couldn't decide whether it was a professional or consumer machine. Apple's hardware product matrix at the time had four squares - professional and consumer desktops and portables. The Cube wedged itself between the Pro/Consumer desktops, and for a brief moment Apple lost focus. However, by introducing and maintaining "special edition" higher end versions of its consumer products (from the iMac DV SE, to the iBook SE and then onto the 14 inch iBook), the 17 inch iMac has a much more natural place in the now much wider array of Apple products, especially with the eMac line there to capture the lower end of the market without being substantially different from the iMac line (compared to the G3 iMac and G4 Cube).
An amazing artifact of Apple under the watch of Jobs and Company is that they've been able to bounce back from the Cube and other disappointments (ie - the Switch campaign) without too much damage. Well, maybe it's not amazing. But it's obvious that Apple is different from every other PC company (again - with the possible exception of the Sony Vaio division). Apple continues to put money back into research and development, to open new retail locations, release new products, extend their product offerings, and (generally) remain profitable. Anyone who passes up an XServer and Mac OS X Server (or even LinuxPPC or PowerPC BSD operating system) because Apple also sells iPods, individual music tracks, and sells home movie editors, needs to evaluate their evaluation criteria. Other PC vendors (particularly ones like Gateway, etc), seem to be equally if not more willing to start and stop product lines on a whim (especially companies who sell Linux equipped servers as well as ones with their own Unix variation - and I'm talking as much (or more) about IBM and Sun here as idiots like SCO). Also to be wary of are big umbrella technologies. IBM has gone from their VisualAge/Smalltalk, SOM/DSOM, ComponentBroker ages now to WebSphere - and there are lots of different items offered under that. Microsoft has gone from VBX to OCX to ActiveX "Active...er, Visual Everything!" lines to the new .NET line which they've already scaled back and scaled back and scaled back immensely. How Apple's product line changes (especially now that Mac OS X has settled out) are any worse, I have yet to see.