BW: Apple's Schiller sees opportunity for Mac with Windows 7 launch

I think Apple is assuming 7 will be the failure Vista was. They may be sorely disappointed. If Windows 7 isn't well received it'll be Microsoft’s PR and advertising machines to blame this time around and not the developers. I've installed Windows 7 RC and I have to say it is vastly superior to Vista. For the first time in a while I actually enjoy using Windows. As far as a mass stampede to the computer store? Maybe, maybe not. Here is why I think not. We have to consider all the people who bought new computers but opted to skip Vista. Remember the license loop hole Dell and others exploited in order to ship XP to customers who still wanted it (and a great deal DID still want it)? Well, this is all relatively current and capable hardware out there running a legacy OS. People are unlikely to dump it for a Mac just to avoid the minor headache of doing something they should be doing anyway which is backing up their data. The company I work for is a prime example. We skipped Vista for various reasons, yet we are constantly ordering new hardware and imaging them with XP. I've lost count of the number of hardcore gamers with ridiculously powerful hardware who simply refused to go anywhere near Vista (not even for a Scooby snack).

I do agree that no upgrade path from XP may make for a few sour grapes, but you must have a cut off point somewhere. In all fairness Apple went through similar growing pains when they switched from OS 9 to the Unix based OS X, and then most recently when they ditched PowerPC and migrated to Intel processors. Granted they used emulation layers to make these transitions somewhat smoother; the fact remains every company is faced with this at some point.

I have a theory as to why they elected not to make an upgrade available for xp users. It wasn't OS limitations, but all the incompatible XP apps that would cease to work under 7 after the upgrade or even worse cause 7 to become unstable right out of the box. They are after all trying to avoid bad PR this time around and nothing makes bad press like a bunch of ticked off former XP users who don't understand that a great deal of the apps they are using on XP either went the way of the dinosaur or was patched to work with Vista and hence 7. Lets not get started on the amount of legacy hardware still trolling about in some of these systems. Thats got driver compatibility nightmare written all over it. There is plenty of hardware out there that reached the end of the line with windows XP. That means some of this stuff may have been rattling around in Win95 and Win98 (most passed on millennium) boxes before people upgraded to XP.

Its interesting to stop and consider that for some of these people this upgrade will be the first in nearly 9 years. They'll be the ones who need new computers and guess what will come installed on it. Having to listen to people grumble about no upgrade path from XP is much easier to deal with than an endless cavalcade of software and hardware compatibility complaints from all corners. This also cuts Apple off before they can gin up another "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" commercial to exploit the situation.

Ken, Your invite? Come to our Win 7 Party! We will be running it on an iMac! See our fb page - Just search - Autobahn Communications, Inc. (And we are within 50 yards of the surf! How much more could anyone want?)

@Tom
thanks for the explanations :)

I guess i do fit into an enthusiast in that i didnt just go and get the best dell i could for my budget... i've bought dells in the past and they've been good enough, but i do like to research stuff, which is what lead me to pcspecialist.co.uk and essentially got them to build me a much better tower than i woulda got at Dell.
Comparing mine to a Dell T7500 I can see how it compares to my machine - same clock speed, bit less RAM, but faster RAM, roughly same CPU... which comes to £2860 (incl VAT) but like I said, I paid £1300 for mine and that was over a year ago.
If I had the budget and need to buy a new PC from where I got my last, I would go for something like http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/index.php?page=spec&&spec=performance2000 which has stupidly high specs (and a pretty hideous case - would swap that out!), and still for under 2 grand.

anyway, i think the car thing can be a good analogy. you could compare a MacPro to a high end sportscar or a Merc where everything is that bit more finely tuned, but ultimately, it's still just a car. It gets you from A to B just like a Ford Focus or Audi T3 can,

I'm no MS fanboy - there's plenty of stuff I don't like about em - IE6 being the obvious, but tbh all their browsers are way behind. the Office suite, their attitude to Outlook still using the Word rendering engine - makes my job that bit harder.
And I'm not anti-Apple either - I own an iPod Touch and very happy with it.
Neither would I rule out getting a Mac Pro in the future, but ultimately, I'm happy enough with my PC, I'm looking forward to Win7, and I don't really see the advantage of me spending nearly twice as much money for something I dont see the benefit of... which is why I have no desire to buy a sports car either!

I am one of those that want an in between machine not because I don't like the iMac I have 2, but because when the internal hardware becomes dated I still have a perfectly good monitor that is now going to waste. I want to be able to purchase a high level iMac class machine (one with discreet graphics) that I can connect to an external monitor as the display will usually outlast the computer by a number of years. I sent a note to Apple when the flat panel iMac came out and suggested they put a video in port and a toggle on them so I could use the display with an external computer Mac or other when the time came to replace the computer but they never took me up on it.

@Quinn Taylor: How is that a troll? its pretty much the truth.

"The ironic part is, migrating data to a new Mac is just as easy as migrating data to a new PC, if not slightly easier."

That can be debatable. because it will take a new user a few minutes to understand the differences in the filsystem and menu layout from windows and mac.

"Plus, you can create a boot camp partition and retain everything from the old PC if buying new software titles is too much outlay."

To do that they have to:

1. Buy a mac.
2. Buy, or reuse windows.
3. Install windows on a mac, essentially making it exactly the same as a new PC, with OSX tacked on the side.

I dont see why a normal user is going to go through all the trouble to get a mac to install windows on, rather than getting a new windows PC.

I would like to see how they market this however. Apple cant slam 7 the way they did vista because it would mainly be them saying bad things, most others are positive about 7.

@Actionable Mango: I highly doubt Apple is ever going to make a midsized tower product. Expansion slots are worthless for the consumer market as their needs are met by USB. Those in the pro market that need expansion slots for SAN interfaces or other uses buy a Mac Pro. The enthusiast market is the only place left that wants/needs expansion slots, and it's a market Apple isn't likely to target. Most enthusiasts build their own machine, or start with a cheep box and expand to get what they want.

Trust me, I'd love to see Apple make a machine that would allow the graphics card to be swapped easily in the midrange, but it just doesn't make sense for them business wise. Apple makes a lot of money because they simplified their product line as much as possible to still cover a large percentage of their market. The expense to cover the entire market just isn't cost effective for them.

Why doesn't Apple just make it an option to have a Windows 7/Snow Leopard Dual Boot on Mac's if requested. They already sell Windows in the the stores, why not allow somebody to walk out with a machine with Windows on it? Getting the Machine in the peoples hands is the first step, the second is weening them in to a new OS.

I'm going to switch back from Mac systems to Windows systems with the Windows 7 release. Comparable Apple computers cost 50% more. I am not sure how that helps Apple, but if these crystal ball reader says so than it must be true.

I will be shorting Apple stock over the next 3 days. Save this post and lets revisit it in a year.

This is where they should advertise the new version of VM Fusion. It's touting major benchmark performances with Windows 7. Why not get an end all purchase with Mac, Fusion, & Windows7. Imo I think it's a killer combo. All this mac is better than pc doesn't work on most that HAVE to use Windows (don't try and compete using iWork). What does work is to show that moving to a Mac you don't lose any functionality AND you gain... Show some highlights that using a Mac is easy, like installing programs, using spotlight, using Fusion. That will get peoples attention. I know, that's what I do, and I've migrated a handful of my clients.

@Tom - it was a mid level Performance level machine.

To give a rough idea of what I was matching on the Apple Store, I have a quad core 2.67GHz machine with 1TB HDD, 4GB RAM with a 512GB GeForce 8900GTX.
I use it every day for work - I can run photoshop, dreamweaver, spotify, tweetdeck, 4 browsers, various documents and explorer windows, ftp, a virtual machine (running XP for the detestable IE6 testing) email client and get no significant slowdown, even when I'm running 2 windowed Eve online clients on medium gfx settings in the background (AFK mining / trading!!).
I would say thats a pretty high performance for computer over a year old running on Vista!

If I'm misunderstanding what a Mac Pro is as a "workstation" machine, then I'd be interested to know what they are as it's not a term I've come across really.

In terms of upgrading (well, maybe not upgrading but at least transferring!!) to a Mac, I was more referring to the change of UI etc. I've used Macs a fair bit for development work and find my workflow is signifcantly slower and more frustrating with them, but then I'm used to Windows machines, so that's a big hurdle to get over for any long time PC user to move to a Mac OS. I know Mac's are supposed to be intuitive, but I wouldn't agree with that and I know I'm not alone.

And yeh - I'm based in the UK.