06-16-2010, 12:46 PM
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Apple vs Motorola has the same feel to it as Apple vs IBM.
It's not really Apple vs Motorola, just like it wasn't really Apple vs IBM -- it's Apple and their closed, proprietary system versus an operating system that's openly available to be run by any hardware anyone wants to build to support it.
Apple might beat Motorola, just like they basically beat IBM in the desktop computer market, but they'll probably lose to Android just like they lost to MS-DOS.
In fact, in the chart above, you might as well combine the Motorola Droid and Nexus One figures. That's like IBM and Compaq. They may be different brands but they both work on the same OS.
I hear what you're saying about problems in programming for various hardware platforms running the same OS, but that somehow didn't stop the PC market. I distinctly recall when playing old, old PC games, having to pick my graphics card from a list of 30 so it would know how to run the game. It was apparently considered better to put up with the hassles of dealing with 30 different video cards than to simply write for the Apple and get cut off from the MS-DOS market. (And eventually the OS itself handled the hardware differences, as Microsoft started doing with DirectX and HAL type concepts.)
In the long run, it's not the popularity of a particular brand that determines the winner, it's the popularity of the OS.
My prediction:
Some years from now, the iPhone will be running the Android OS or whatever it evolves into, just like Macs today can run Windows. Apple eventually will have to deal with the fact that they can't run a private OS on private hardware and compete with another OS that is allowed to run on ANYONE's hardware.
Apple vs Motorola has the same feel to it as Apple vs IBM.
It's not really Apple vs Motorola, just like it wasn't really Apple vs IBM -- it's Apple and their closed, proprietary system versus an operating system that's openly available to be run by any hardware anyone wants to build to support it.
Apple might beat Motorola, just like they basically beat IBM in the desktop computer market, but they'll probably lose to Android just like they lost to MS-DOS.
In fact, in the chart above, you might as well combine the Motorola Droid and Nexus One figures. That's like IBM and Compaq. They may be different brands but they both work on the same OS.
I hear what you're saying about problems in programming for various hardware platforms running the same OS, but that somehow didn't stop the PC market. I distinctly recall when playing old, old PC games, having to pick my graphics card from a list of 30 so it would know how to run the game. It was apparently considered better to put up with the hassles of dealing with 30 different video cards than to simply write for the Apple and get cut off from the MS-DOS market. (And eventually the OS itself handled the hardware differences, as Microsoft started doing with DirectX and HAL type concepts.)
In the long run, it's not the popularity of a particular brand that determines the winner, it's the popularity of the OS.
My prediction:
Some years from now, the iPhone will be running the Android OS or whatever it evolves into, just like Macs today can run Windows. Apple eventually will have to deal with the fact that they can't run a private OS on private hardware and compete with another OS that is allowed to run on ANYONE's hardware.