One Comment to “Apple Safari for Windows has seen more than 1 million downloads”

1. RL | June 15th, 2007 at 08:11 pm
   

   So getting back to our previous comment about the implications of the Google + Apple potentials, I would like to define the following scenario and strategic implications:

   Introduction: Complementing core competencies
   Apple wants to view itself as a software company, but the fact of the matter is that under its current business model the software is only a means to improve the sales of the hardware. So I will call them a consumer hardware company or computer based electronics company.
   If you want factual reasoning, just look at the sales of Apple computers since the launch of a beta version of Boot-Camp - the people who buy the computers were Windows users that did not want Macs because they had to use Windows… But now they can benefit from both the Windows they “want” and the Mac’s hardware they really want… so as I said… at the core is hardware.
   On a side note, I do want to state that after Jobs got the ‘hit’ from MS in the 80’s, and GOT IT about the importance of software in terms of locking-in the customers… he cannot release this notion of importance and keep emphasizing it to his company (he started with this drift, to remind you, just after the got back in 1997 - I guess he had enough time in NeXT to realize that: “its all about the software”…
   So hardware as we said…

   Listen and listen carefully! You might disagree, but its true, every single word!
   Google is even more of a hardware company! Why you ask? Well it goes like this…
   Google’s main business started from an ingeniously simple idea for search, but since then, all of its other innovations and what people are more and more calling Web 2.0 / Google Operating System applications (including the basic initial search) are operated on a strong and ultra sophisticated hardware/software mechanism that rivals the worlds top super-computers… I like to call it the “Googleplex infrastructure”. Simply put, this mechanism enables Google to use simple and cheap hardware in clusters, that ‘mimic’ much much stronger operationally sophisticated systems, at a fraction of the cost. So you will say, well its the software that does the job here (coordinating and collaborating CPU/Memory between all these pieces), no? Well yes but the fact is that at the end of the day they managed to create themselves a great hardware platform, no matter how they get it done. On this they build the strong software infrastructure for search and maps (all the rest is peanuts - for now!)

   So… we have 2 hardware companies that are tagged by everyone as software companies, and that both think that MS is their enemy, because it’s a software company (a real one!). You might say that I’m generalizing the potential of these 2… but in fact “core competency” is defined by what safeguards you the money - not the cash register, but what de-facto feature that your company has is the one you could not survive without. For both companies the stuff I described is the CORE: Apple will not survive only on software (selling OS x and iPod software to 3rd party vendors…), and Google will not survive without the hardware infrastructure that feeds the search that feeds the ads that feed their awesome cafeteria in San Fran.

   After all of this - I want to state that they are also complementing each other. Google has the back-end infrastructure and access to customers, and Apple has the user (front-end) device (iPod, iPhone & Macs). As I said earlier the actual softwares that runs on both’s hardware is the “peanuts” in the story (OS X / Gmail and Co.)

   The marriage: Apple devices running a Google back-end OS, and all of that over Safari.

   Google needs to develop Web 3.0 (yes 3, not 2) applications, and the current internet tools are not even close to what can and should be possible over their ever growing infrastructure. But they need to wait until someone out there players the game of catchup, with the front-end (device and browser) because that is their only window to the end-user. It would be wonderful to cooperate with Mozilla / Gecko, but they are too slow and even then faster than most commercial engines (as a reminder they are Open Source).
   MS is not even an option… (they are the “enemy” remember?)
   So here comes along Apple. A “small” and cool looking company, that on top of having the 3rd largest browser community out there, it also provides 2 other great features (1) the browser’s engine is a “controlled” Open source (so its cool, hip and “right”/”good”) (2) they also have some end-user devices with a bunch of nice functionality… So yu hu! Let’s talk to them… ;-)

   Luckily enough, Steve Jobs (the Emperor of the little Apple kingdom) likes some of the services that Google makes (most notable the “it’s so cool” maps service!) - so here we are, as Steve said in 1997, “meaningful relationships” (although at the time he was referring to MS, and some obscure app called “Office Mac”?!?!)

   Now imagine this:
   Woke up, got out of bed
   Dragged a comb across my head
   Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
   And looking up, my iPhone noticed I was late
   It found my coat and showed me where to grab my hat
   And let me know I’m going to make the bus in seconds flat
   It found my way upstairs and I had a talk
   Somebody spoke and i went into a dream…

   In 2012 this will be a 20GB+ 3Dflash 4G iPhone. It will have another 1TB of memory on iGoogle. My 3D iPod experience will use core animation to the tunes that are buffered to the device from a constant ultra-band web connection… All of my life will by then be registered and monitored on the secure Google service (all because I wanted, and because it is convenient, just as it was convenient to have all the “initially necessary” applications on these old Win 98 machines from the 90’s…

   Google needs a platform that is open and controlled, that is advanced and cool, that is functional and seamless… and Apple is the perfect extension that delivers this + more…
   For Apple, this is an opportunity to WIN against Windows… it is the way to sell more devices based on the ever growing need to push a software based device that cannot easily be copied and sustains its advantage, just like the iTunes+iPod marriage: the iGoogle+iApple marriage will be immensely powerful…

   If its going to happen or not, is another question, for which I’m sure even Jobs and Schmidt are not sure of, right now… But that is what I saw in my dream, upstairs… and it made me very iHappy…

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