Hellweg Responds To Mac Zealots
from the have-fun,-guys dept
So, the Business 2.0 article trashing Apple got a lot of attention here so you can only imagine how much attention the writer got. He's now written a response to all the angry Mac fans who accused him of being an ignorant slut, among other bits of constructive criticism. He attempts to clarify his points, and I think he does a pretty good job of explaining why Apple may face problems in the future if they don't address these issues. He doesn't, however, answer the question of how it is that only the "best 5%" of people in the world buy Apples, as was explained to us morons in the 95% at Techdirt.
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Well...he's not a slut.
He's trying to have this both ways - on the one hand, he says Apple has done much to improve networking. On the other hand, it's not Windows, so it will never be as good.
What's up with that? I think I could make a credible argument that, out of the box, Mac OS works better with Windows than the other way around. I mean, if nothing else, if I stick a Windows disk in my Apple machine, the OS is more than happy to read it. If I put a Mac disk in my fancy Windows 2K Server, it just asks me if I want to format it.
Jeez, gimme a break.
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Re: Well...he's not a slut.
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Re: Actually...
I wasn't perhaps as articulate as I might have been previously - lest I be accused of the same shortcomings, let me take another crack at it.
Here is the problem: In both this and the previous article, he casually tosses off assertions left and right. That's ok - it's an opinion piece, so he's entitled to share his views: "But when it comes to network interoperability, it's still easier to perform many network functions across the same platform than it is to go cross-platform. And since there are a lot more Windows servers out there than Mac servers, this puts Apple at a natural disadvantage."
Two problems - this is a bit of a change from the original article in which he directly criticized Mac networking - here, he backs up to some goofy position about same platform vs. different platforms. Doesn't really matter, because he never offers any proof for either point. What's harder? How much harder? He made a bad call, people tagged him for it, and - logically - he chokes. Second, the point about there being more Windows servers than Macs is true - but how is that really relevent to the criticism? If you want to get down to numbers, I'm sure there are more Windows servers than there are mainframes - but nobody is going to toss one because of that.
You've got the same sort of issues on his criticism of Jobs not being the best person to take the company forward. He might be right - I've certainly seen a number of visionaries fly their companies right into the side of a mountain. Ugly. But I'd go back to my previous point - the company is profitable, is pulling double digit margins, has lots of buzz, and is growing. If Helleweg wants to make the case that, with his current track record, Jobs is not the goto guy for Apple, he needs to come up with some sort of qualifications. If not Jobs, who? What qualities would this person have?
Hellweg's job is to sell magazines - and controversial opinions will do the trick. But if he wants to keep selling them, he'll need to do a much better job of justifying and defending those opinions.
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networking = buzz word?
Other than that, he has a few points (emphasis on few). I'm just wondering why he isn't out bashing Sun, too? Aren't they also a niche player in the same market? Why doesn't anyone compare Apple to Sun? I don't think Solaris networks as well with MS.... :P
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