Windows.. it's like coming home! 3403

I think I've depicted an Apple that tries to retain its customers by offering them a steady stream of fancy new toys and software. (And an exciting new instruction set!)

They're obviously not totally oblivious to it, but it is down their list of priorities, and can be overcome with some judicious use of Aluminium and Genie Effect :-)

Well obviously to attempt to move over with literally no apps whatsoever would be a little extreme, so Rosetta is kind of a given.

I was talking about their effort to maintain backwards compatibility with OS 9 software, which is a more realistic kind of cut-off when considering how users would view their compatibility track record.

I also doubt whether Apple has the stomache for the sort of dour slog being a player in the enterprise market typically is. I do think though that OS X on the current generation of Mac hardware is a far more realistic enterprise platform, from a technical point of view, than OS 9 could ever have been.

The laptop situation before the transition could have been considered pretty much as dire as the the OS 9 situation was in 2000. It didn't have as interesting a story behind it as the failure to adequately replace OS 9, but it was still killing Apple's portable sales. The surge in their laptop sales since the Intel transition would seem to suggest that users were more interested in compebreastive performance than legacy support.

The faster the transition occurs, and the more and more Universal applications appear, the stronger Apple's portable sales are likely to get. Apple will probably see this as vindicating their decision to transition so quickly. They knew their userbase well.