Gartenberg: "The Mac is back" and it's a business, not a hobby

Wish I got paid to write useless observations like Gartenberg...

Since when has the Mac been a "hobby"?? - Apple dove into other consumer electronics, that's all. Broadened their market share and product lineup. There's no conspiricy here. Many companies do this. Look at sony, HP, Dell, Etc. Yes, it's weird to compare Apple to some of these more, "mainstream" companies, but there's truthfully nothing different here in the way they broadened their lineup.

The sky is falling. The sky is falling. Some blogger said so. OMG!

Apple sells shed loads of Macs, keeps publishing updates to OS X and holds a 'Back To The Mac' event... please tell me Michael Gartenberg doesn't get paid to state the obvious ;-)

As a long time apple user, who has used everything from an Apple IIe to the Mac Pro.

I am starting to see Apple do something that a few years ago seem unthinkable.

There was a time that many Apple critics said, "Apple Computer should kill the Mac hardware and start licensing the operating system like Microsoft."

In the last few years I have seen Apple take steps in that very direction. First they moved to the intel processor.

Then they started to focus more on consumer products like the iPod.

After a while they abandoned their own hardware "Firewire" on the iPod to make it more compatible with Windows clones.

Then they came out with the iPhone, dropped computer from their name and there has been almost no development for the Mac.

Next came the iPad, yet the Mac hardware seems stagnant. Yes they have released a few updated versions of the hardware, but each has actually lost features and tech specs. Most of theses updates I suspect were actually was to reduce overhead cost on their end to increase profit margins.

An example of reduced tech specs would be the latest Mac Pro which has slower processors than it's predecessor (2.66 Ghz vs. 3Ghz).

On the laptop line they have started to remove capabilities as well with the removal of the PC card slot. The lack of such slot means added functionality can only com in the form of a USB or Firewire peripheral.

An example on how this comes into play when talking about business. Many businesses now used a smart card to log into computers and some services. For mac users that means you will always need an external smart card reader.

I would guess Apple's next step is to kill the Mac hardware all together and license the operating system.

I have started to ponder what I will do if that happens.

Still doesn't help us enterprise users dependent upon the now discontinued XServe. A Mac Mini or Mac Pro are woeful alternatives to a genuine server when using it for network home folders.

This was kind of a useless article. OSX will still be available? Phew, thought they were going to discontinue.

Gartenberg... Bleh...