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Forbes on Apple's Success: It's the Software, Stupid

Forbes on Apple's Success: It's the Software, Stupid

by , 10:50 AM EDT, April 15th, 2008

There's one main thing at the heart of Apple's success, according to Forbes magazine's Brian Caulfield, and if you think it's the company's great industrial design, there should a loud buzzer sound going off near you. Instead, it's all about the software that runs in that hardware.

Mr. Caulfield's observations, which we found to be poignant, came in a piece and slideshow looking at what Forbes thinks are the seven greatest innovations in Apple's history.

"Everywhere you turn this year, Apple's machines are on the march," wrote Mr. caulfield. "The common denominator? Software. While great industrial design always attracts gawkers, it's software that makes Apple's proliferating array of machines so comfortable to use on a long-term basis."

"Apple's best products," he wrote, "mix the curb appeal of a Lamborghini with easy-to-drive friendliness of a Honda Accord."

Mr. Caulfield also noted Apple's ability to make "the whole widget" -- i.e. controlling both the software and the hardware -- is an important element to why the company's software works so well. While the rest of the computing industry flocked to Microsoft's anyone-can-license business model starting in the 1980s, Apple's adherence to the earlier model of making that whole widget makes it possible for the company's products to work more smoothly.

That observation is particularly timely, especially coming from a mainstream source like Forbes, in light of the controversy over Psystar's Open Computer, which the company is marketing as a cheap alternative to Apple's hardware if you want to run Mac OS X. What does "Mac" mean if the concept includes non Apple hardware?

That's a question for another time, but it's worth considering as you check out Forbes' slideshow of the seven greatest innovations in Apple's history. Those seven are OS X (not listed as Mac OS X, we might add), iLife, iTunes, the original Mac OS (check out the picture of Steve Jobs in a bow tie from the 1980s), John Sculley's Newton, iPhone, and iPod.

Observer Comments

Show: Subjects Only | Full Comments
Close Name:Guest
Subject: why the heck do they quote Enderle ?!?!?

why the heck do they quote Enderle ?!?!?

Close Name:Guest
Subject:

Business Schools 2020
(1) Through Windows bloat, Microsoft destroys it's own monopoly.
(2) Through Virtualization, Apple makes Mac OS irrelevant.
(3) By default, Linux takes over. Users embrace DOS-like command lines. Thirteen unique versions blossom.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Controlling "the whole widget"

That truly has been the advantage. Controlling "the whole widget" has been around for a long time and has not been learned by the recent generations. There was, in the olden days, such a thing as ANSI Standard. If you wrote your code according to ANSI Standard for the software language you were using, there was a good likelihood that it would run on anybody's hardware. But if you wrote your program using the hardware manufacturer's "extension's" for that same language, you were in for big trouble when you changed hardware. I was there when hardware was changed from IBM to Honeywell mainframes.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: The triple comment

I submitted the comment and was given an error message stating that I had entered and invalid id code and told to try again. So I did with three or more new codes, yet each time I got the same error message! Need to fix the processor.

[extra posts deleted by Intruder]

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