In my last post about Apple, I put forth the idea that Apple's strategy of putting their advanced OS X operating system in all of their devices was going to enable them to surpass their competitors in a number of fields. In my post, I mainly talked about the advantages that Apple gained by adapting OS X to run on everything from the Apple TV to the iPhone. What I didn't talk about, were the disadvantages of this strategy.
Fortunately, shortly after I made my post, my friend Carl chimed in via the comments section, with one big negative that this strategy could possibly incur for Apple:
"I think Windows fell apart partly because of the number of combinations of devices it had to be able to support as it grew. Apple has limited this by controlling the core hardware, but I'm not sure they can limit it forever. Either way, the more platforms they have to keep going simultaneously with OS X, the harder it will be to get full test coverage."
While I had planned to respond to Carl's comment, my planned response has certainly changed, as of yesterday. Because it was yesterday that Apple announced that Mac OS X Leopard is going to ship 4 months late -- because Apple has been focusing on getting the iPhone out the door by "late June".
So, score one for Carl -- he identified a very real pain point that Apple is experiencing with their new OS X strategy. And while I think that Apple might need to beef up it's OS engineering in the mid to short term in order to deal with the new reality of OS X, yet like Carl, I don't think that's going to be enough. Unlike Carl though, I do think that there is a way for Apple to have OS X run on many different devices, yet still avoid Microsoft's fate.
How is Apple going to achieve this feat you ask, gentle reader? Why, with a trick, of course. Let me point you to an Ars Technica article from February, that didn't make many waves in the Mac blogosphere: "Intel's coming embedded play". The basic thrust of this article is that in the wake of Intel's sale of their XScale division, instead of exiting the embedded market, Intel might be coming at it from a different direction - namely building embedded chips that can execute the x86 ISA. For why this matters to Apple (especially in light of it's current predicament), I'll leave it to Jon "Hannibal" Stokes to explain:
"To put it another way, do you really think that Apple wants to pay programmers to work on an ARM port of Darwin? Me neither. But right now, ARM is what will fit in the iPhone. The minute that x86 fits in the iPhone, then the software cost equation changes for Apple in ways that may make x86 more attractive."
If this new CPU really does come to pass (and I think that it will -- the argument for it is certainly compelling), then Apple will find itself in a situation where they can write code for one ISA, and have it run everywhere. Because there will be x86-compatible chips in Apple's future phones, iPods, TV set top boxes, and Macintoshes. This will limit the amount of devices that the OS X team has to support, helping Apple get their economy-of-scale groove back on.
And now, do we see why Steve Jobs got Apple in bed with Intel, and not AMD?
:)
-Andy.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Macintosh, Steve Jobs, Intel, Analysis, Ars Technica, iPhone, Apple TV, Mac OS X, x86, Instruction Set Architecture
Haha, thanks Andy.
One ISA would be a dream. They'll still have a huge raft of peripherals to deal with, though, and that's where thorough testing really becomes difficult, IMHO.
Especially since, as my friend at a major storage hardware company would tell you, hardware and firmware bugs abound. Or, as he put it, "I'm shocked that these things actually work."