Unleashing the retail wars

11:58AM Wednesday July 22, 2009

Apple continuously either defines categories, or redefines them. For example, Apple invented the Macintosh in the early 1980s and teamed it with a dedicated operating system while everyone else was buying systems from different software vendors. This allowed Apple to leverage the hardware features to a greater extent than just putting an off-the-shelf system over a bunch of off-the-shelf components.

Back then in particular, Macs weren't built from off-the-shelf components alone. With the 'other' Steve, Steve Wozniak, Apple had the talents of a genius designer-engineer.

Woz famously got the mouse - which he did not invent - from a horribly expensive, multi-part device down to an easily manufacturable device with a few, well designed and engineered parts. Computer users scoffed at the mouse. Take a look at them now.

Branding both the software and hardware and making it usable for people other than computer scientists won Apple immediate approval with designers and kicked off several revolutions, just as the famous 1984 Superbowl commercial made by Ridley Scott promised. One in particular was so-called desktop publishing, which utterly transformed the way publishing was undertaken.

It's interesting that, as with a few other revolutions Apple unleashed over the years, Apple didn't see the exact shape of what was coming either, but was always quick to modify and adapt to take advantage of it, at least with Jobs in the hot seat. But I digress.

Companies saw what Apple was doing and made bids for some of the action. Of course they did - that's business. Microsoft, for example, developed Word and Excel for the Mac's GUI (Graphical User Interface) and people would buy Macs back then just to get Word or Excel in a graphical form.

It sounds weird now, but Word and Excel weren't available on machines running Microsoft operating systems for a couple of years after they were on Macs.

Once Microsoft figured out ho to make its own GUI-based OS, Word and Excel were written to suit, and finally made it to the rest of the PCs.

A company called Aldus capitalised pretty fast on the DTP revolution with PageMaker. Eventually Aldus was bought by Adobe, which had developed Photoshop for Mac - Photoshop, as I recall, started out called something else entirely, and was actually a file translator.

Anyway, Adobe became one of the biggest players in the Mac market and Photoshop was another flagship Mac product, and another reason to buy Macs. Then the company ported Photoshop to work on Windows-based PCs.

This later grew so big for Adobe that its Mac development started to lag, but things are pretty much back to level now. (New Zealand apparently has one of the biggest installed bases per head of population of Adobe software on Macs, and was one of the fastest adopters of InDesign over Quark Express and PageMaker for page layout.)

More recently Apple built its own Apple Stores to sell Apple products, and as geographically-locatable support beacons and to put the Apple brand out there in public view.

Meanwhile, companies like Dell were pioneering online-only sales models.

Then Apple produced the iPhone to a barrage of criticism, then the App Store. "Another triumph of marketing over substance!" trumpeted anti-Mac nutters.

The App Store was another example of Apple creating something great. Once again, staffers seemed surprised at what resulted - the explosion of apps and development using Apple's Software Developer Kit and the abilities of the iPhone and iPod touch to create a vast galaxy of applications, utilities and games. Once again, Apple adapted quickly to the opportunity it had created.

Criticism of the App Store model from some quarters appeared to have changed into the green of envy - now the other smart phone companies are trying something similar, although the world hardly seems to have taken notice, yet.

Now Microsoft has announced plans to emulate the physical Apple Stores, too.

Last week Microsoft's chief operating officer Kevin Turner said, in a speech at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans: "We're going to have some retail stores opened up that are opened up right next door to Apple stores this fall. Stay tuned."

It appears Microsoft intends to open stores explicitly near to Apple stores. Presumably that's so people can walk into an Apple Store, see the range of well-priced goodies, then bail next door for the bargain PCs.

That could well be self-defeating, as it does rather make you think that there is only one advantage to a Windows-based PC. It's cheap. So's stuff in the Two Dollar Shop.

As veteran US tech commentator John C Dvorak says, "First of all, what are the benefits of the Windows-based PC over the Mac besides price? You'd never know based on these ads." (He was referring to Microsoft's last major ad campaign).

Meanwhile, Dell joined in using the same (sole?) tactic of the price difference: Dell sent out emails in the US for a back-to-school special.

Rather than just promote their laptops, as it has usually done, Dell compared its top student laptops to the Apple laptops with the same specs. The comparisons include the Macbook 15 and 17-inch versus the Dell Studio 15 and 17-inch models.

Apart from citing some questionable Mac pricing (according to the Centernetworks posting by Allen Stern linked above), Dell ended its promo email with the rather incredible assertion that after saving $1000+ over a Mac, students can then go buy an iPod Touch! Well, that's one for Apple, anyway.

Since Apple launched its first physical retail store back in 2001, Apple's annual revenues have grown from US$5 billion to US$32 billion, writes the Boston.com on its business site. Boston seems keen to get a Microsoft Store of it's own, thinking it will "boost retail competition".

Well, Apple's share of the personal computer market has risen from 3 per cent in 2001, when the first Apple Store was built, to 7.6 per cent in the US today, partly as a result of the Apple Stores.

Once again, this all shows it's 'little' Apple setting the agenda for the big guys.

- Mark Webster mac.nz

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