Screed journalism is alive and well in the technology industry. Witness Rob Enderle’s latest digital version of yellow journalism in Why Apple should license Windows 7. The logic (or lack of) is stunning.
Let’s start out by saying that hell would likely freeze over before this happened but then I can recall just a few years ago…
You can see it coming, right? Apple moved the Mac to Intel and licensed Exchange from Microsoft. Add to that Apple’s official blessing of running Windows on a Mac via Boot Camp, VMWare Fusion, or Parallels and anything can happen.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that impossible things can happen between these two companies.
The catch here is that impossible things do not happen. Why? Because they’re impossible. Improbable things happen, even more so when they make perfect sense.
How does it make any sense that Apple should license Windows 7?
…last week VMware servers were brought to their knees as a result of downloads for Fusion 3.0 a product that is used to run Windows on Mac hardware. This would suggest that an incredibly large number of recent Apple customers are putting Windows 7 on their Macs anyway and not waiting for Apple to license the product from Microsoft.
There’s that inescapable Enderle thinking process wreaking havoc with logic and reason. Because VWware’s servers were slow to deliver downloads for a new version of Fusion must mean that a large number of Mac users are tired of waiting for Apple to license Windows.
Therefore, Apple needs to license Windows. Yes, Rob, but why? Enderle doesn’t say, of course, because there are no good reasons why, and relative to the one million new Macs being sold each month, those running Windows on a Mac constitute a tiny, tiny minority.
If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then what are Microsoft and Google to Apple? Enderle thinks Apple and Microsoft need to defend themselves from Google.
Google’s strategy is to render both operating systems irrelevant and perhaps the best way to avoid that is for both Apple and Microsoft to work together to make sure that, by working better together, they never can be.
That’s an interesting thought. Is Google the enemy of both Apple and Microsoft? Or, is Microsoft the enemy of both Apple and Google? Or, is it that Apple is the enemy of both Google and Microsoft? See the problem there?
Google represents a real threat to both companies because it is working to change the fundamental model that underlies the margins both Microsoft and Apple live under. Google believes in commodity hardware, advertising funded free software, and the web as a platform and once 4G becomes wide spread, Google’s model should reach a point that they could largely displace both firms.
I do not disagree that Google represents a threat to both Apple and Microsoft. There are questions to ask and Rob Enderle is the wrong person to ask them, let alone answer them. For example, how much of a threat is Android to the iPhone or Windows Mobile (I submit that it’s more to the latter than the former). From such analysis and questions can arise a premise:
“Apple and Microsoft should band together to thwart Google’s attacks.”
That’s a much more appropriate consideration than the long-winded, ill-advised, nonsensical, Apple should license Windows 7 smokescreen-designed-to-get-page-hits from Enderle.
What should Apple do instead of licensing Windows? Continue to build better products. I have no doubt that Google is no longer a friend of Apple, but a true-blue enemy of the state. Google gives away free that which Apple needs to sell to survive and prosper. There are reasons why the iPhone has no Flash support. There are reasons why the iPhone has no Google Phone support.
It’s called competition.
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