Myths of Snow Leopard 3: Mac Sidelined for iPhone June 19th, 2008
It's not like the iPhone is getting much attention, is it? With limited comments on Snow Leopard (due mid 2009) there is a myth that Apple is de-emphasizing the Mac as it focuses attention on the iPhone.
Snow Leopard is marketed currently as “taking a break” from adding major new marketing features. But this is just a supposed lack of new features (maybe just a good case of unde sell, over deliver). "Software sells systems" ...
Daniel's angle? "Apple postponed Leopard’s release on the Mac in order to prepare for the iPhone debut, not because it decided Mac sales weren’t important, but because Mac sales were through the roof and didn’t need Leopard to accelerate them."
In comparison, look at bad-selling, over-selling and fraudulent mis-selling of Vista, e.g. the "Vista Capable" PC problem, an ongoing legal case currently, or XP sales going down as Vista (you can "buy" Vista, and then downgrade" to XP).
Apple did have record unit sales in 2007. And Apple doesn't make too much money on OS sales, it makes money on systems, hardware. The iPhone might well have been rushed out, and needed more attention, but that hasn't taken Apple's long term focus off the Mac side of Apple either. With the iPhone released, Leopard sold well, and was as the author of the article said, "fashionably late".
iPods and iPhones have helped sales of other Apple products, helped finance retail store rollout, and widened the potential audience for the Mac. They have driven buyers to the iTunes Store, and to Safari. iPod sales are still high, despite the addition of millions of new iPhones. No need to talk about cannabilism of sales.
Also, the iPhone has also been reaching out to persuade Windows users to consider the Mac platform. Daniel didn't provide hard numbers, but i'd imagine they aren't too hard to come by - the number of people converted to Mac is growing, and the hardware sales are on decent profit margin devices (e.g. the cornering of the >$1,000 pound laptop market, the mp3 player market)
Another effect is that as consumers and execs become iPhone users, this increases the audience for the upcoming App Store, which in turn feeds into the appeal for developers to work on apps for iPhone, giving them a taste of Obj C, and Apple’s Cocoa development tools.
The R&D from the iPhone, iPod and iMac have all been "cross pollinating" in terms of technology as well. Knowledge can be passed between the device areas, and integration can be created.
Apple's development of an entirely new interface paradigm for the iPhone OS, may well yet feedback to OS X. I'd think that the iPhone’s UIKit, and SDK will benefit the Mac OS X AppKit (e.g. adding the modern convention of properties as a way to simplify the class interfaces for the iPhone, and then adding properties to the desktop AppKit in Leopard.)
Daniel comments that QuickTime X (on Snow Leopard) is another example of repurposing code retooled for the iPhone to provide a highly efficient media playback. The extensive work on developing push support for Exchange Server on the iPhone, will be included in other ways, as Exchange support baked into Snow Leopard. MobileMe's mayb well be helpful in terms of research done/tools etc. for Snow Leopard Server’s push services.
Apple’s new Push Notification Service, allows iPhone & iPod touch users to set up server side notification alerts that don’t require any mobile applications to stay running in the background. Along with Bonjour discovery, PNS will keep iPhones wirelessly connected in all sorts of sophisticated ways that third party developers imagine in their applications.
Why couldn't this be used in Snow Leopard too? The point is, the technologies Apple is working on is flowing back and forth within the business it seems, helping not only share and build upon existing ideas, but also create combined value that is greater than the sum of its parts.
We'll have to wait for Snow Leopard. But seeing as it's slated to arrive before Vista's successor, and the fact that Apple at any time will be able to drop more hints to the consumer, and beta versions to developers, no-one should be worried Apple is forgetting about the Mac platform. Apple's aim is to do a few things, well.