Where Apple is trying to balance an old platform and a new one, Microsoft has one very mature operating system. It tries to be as good for tablets as it is for PCs, and for the most part, it succeeds.
Windows 10 is designed to meet this threat head-on: It's designed to bridge the old Windows desktop experience with a new, touch-friendly interface. And with overall PC sales shrinking and smartphones handling an ever larger amount of everyday computing, the future of the company's Windows business is in danger. Microsoft lost out on smartphones - by year's end, Windows phone platforms are expected to drop to a pitiful 1% of global market share. Microsoft swoops inįor Microsoft, this is a huge opportunity. Hence, we get things like the Touch Bar - an underwhelming compromise between old and new while the future shakes itself out.
Not modern enough, and Apple's install base erodes away before there's a real replacement.Īnd when Apple finally starts to push into new platforms like augmented reality or even audible computing, you can bet that it will be centered on the iPhone, not the Mac. It's a tricky balance - if Apple makes the Mac too modern, it hurts iPad adoption. So while the world waits for iOS to mature, Apple still needs to keep the Mac around for the many millions for whom an iPad still isn't good enough.
But we've already seen signals that Apple is thinking in that direction: CEO Tim Cook probably tipped his hand when he pitched the giant-sized iPad Pro as a laptop replacement. It'll be a while before iOS, the operating system on the iPhone and iPad, is really, truly ready to replace a Mac (or a Windows computer, for that matter). When the Apple App Store launched, stuff like Google Docs on the iPhone seemed like a convenient novelty now, as the apps have improved and their feature lists have filled out, they've become normal parts of the workday for millions of people. It's unarguable that today, it's difficult for most people, particularly students and creative professionals, to do their entire jobs on an iPhone or iPad.Ĭonsider this, though: What can you do with the iPhone today that you couldn't when it launched in 2007?
Launching a touch-screen Mac now has a huge potential to confuse the market, split the developer base, and pause the overall transition while customers try to figure out if they need a work-friendly iPad Pro or a touch-screen-enabled Mac. While you and I might want a touch-screen Mac, Apple has already moved its big-picture focus to the iPhone and iPad. Apple will never admit it, but the real goal is to ensure that the Mac stays frozen in time. With Apple's cash reserves, the sky's the limit.īut Apple's actions aren't about money or beating Microsoft on the PC battlefield. Sure, Apple could pour money into the Mac business, inventing a touch-screen MacBook that rivals the Surface Book.
Microsoft - popularly known for decades as the bland purveyor of bland software for bland beige boxes that sit in bland offices - is out-innovating the company that once dared its customers to "Think Different." The contrast between the cool new Surface Studio and the so-so MacBook Pro was striking. When Apple gathered tech reporters in Cupertino, California, on Thursday, the company showed off a new lineup of MacBook Pro laptops sporting largely the same design we've seen for years, but with the addition of a new touch-screen Touch Bar that doubles as a Touch ID fingerprint sensor. It's an entirely new computing category, a sort of desktop-tablet hybrid that already has people excited."
The machine's sharp, superthin screen, smart design, and innovative click wheel led Business Insider's Steve Kovach to write that "the Studio isn't a computer. With its new Surface Studio desktop PC, unveiled last week, Microsoft did something unimaginable: It upstaged Apple.