Rob Enderle has struck again. The analyst with two entries into our Apple Death Knell Counter has once again shown his remarkable ignorance when it comes to Apple. In a piece ostensibly talking about the strengths of Panther, especially when it comes to the corporate market, Mr. Enderle come to the conclusion that Apple should perhaps consider doing the one thing that makes the least sense, splitting itself into hardware and software companies. From Mr. Enderle himself:

One big limitation remains: Apple, like Sun, is a vertically integrated company. Once you are on the Apple platform, your choices are reduced; after buying into it, enterprises can't effectively bid Apple against any other vendor, like Dell or HP, because of prohibitive switching costs. And Apple's conundrum is becoming worse: Vertical companies are increasingly locked out of organizations that require competitive bidding as part of their post-Enron financial controls.

Perhaps Apple should consider Palm's recent move to separate its hardware and software units. Strategically, it encourages better hardware and supports competitive bids.

In the end, Panther is an incredible product whose fate is balanced between the compelling advantages and crippling disadvantages of its corporate parent, itself caught between the computer world of the '70s and the future of appliance PCs.

Now, what in the heck would that accomplish? Apple's biggest advantage when it comes to competing with the Wintel juggernaut is the fact that the company controls the "whole widget," as Steve Jobs is fond of calling it. Controlling the whole widget means that Apple controls the software and the hardware, and it is the only computer vendor on the planet that does so.

The benefit to controlling the whole widget is that Apple can better integrate its software, which is part of the reason the Mac experience is so smooth. The Mac "just works," as so many have described it, and it's not just because of Mac OS X. By splitting itself into hardware and software companies, Apple (both Apple 1 and Apple 2) would no longer have that tight integration, and we would lose that smoothness.

In addition, it is revenues from the hardware side of things that pay for most of the R&D on the software side at Apple. The only way a split would work is if it occurred with several major vendors becoming Mac licensees, and for those combined companies to grow the Mac platform's market share by a factor of 4 or 5 virtually overnight. Otherwise, the software-only version of Apple wouldn't have enough revenue to survive.

Would that happen? Could that happen? Not if the past is any indication.

On the hardware side of things, it doesn't make any sense, either. If Apple were to pursue this sort of business model(s), it would be competing on a price-basis. It would have to, or there is otherwise no benefit to the platform in having competition between hardware vendors. If you are competing on price, you can forget about fancy industrial design and lots of R&D on the hardware side.

Look at Dell. That company makes money, at least on paper, by selling gagillions of inexpensive computers; but all of its R&D is spent on finding new ways to save a few pennies off of construction, not on industrial design or innovative ways to make its computers quieter.

So what happens to the great looks and Apple's "stunning industrial design," as Mr. Enderle called it, in such a scenario? It goes out the window.

Does Rob Enderle ever think before he writes or says something about Apple? It's astounding how wrong one man can be. Then again, this is the same Rob Enderle who said Apple was heading into "obsolescence," and who would be forced to go to Intel in 2003.

Isn't 2003 almost over?

Rob Enderle is a tool, and a tool of the worst kind, one who happily and willfully speaks from a position of sublime ignorance. This latest recommendation for Apple makes as much sense as his prognostications back in 2002, which is to say it makes no sense. In fact, it doesn't stand up to a rebuttal written by me in about 45 minutes.

Apple does indeed face challenges in gaining market share from the Wintel camp, but this sort of split is hardly the right solution.

began using Apple computers in 1983 in a high school BASIC programming class. He started using Macs in 1990 when the Kinko's guy taught him how to use Aldus PageMaker, finally buying a Power Computing Power 100 in 1995. Today, Bryan is the Editor of The Mac Observer, and has contributed to the print versions of MacAddict and MacFormat (UK).

You can send your comments directly to him, or you can also post your comments below.

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