November 29th, 1999

[4:50 PM] That Martellaro! He Nails It Again
by Staff

We don't often recommend columns in our news coverage, but today we will make an exception. John Martellaro of Applelinks and MacOPINION, has written an extraordinary analysis of Apple and the competition. The column is titled "The Art of War - Exploiting The Critical Failure Path," and is part of The Warp Core at Applelinks. From the column:

One of the principal tenants of warfare is to look for the critical failure path. This is the system or the defense that is weakest and has the most cascade failure impact on the rest of the defense. For example, if you were going to attack a well defended terrorist stronghold at night, you could either lose a lot of Marines and Seals in a direct, small arms assault, or you could cut their power source. No electricity means no flood lights, no computer driven security devices, no rooftop radar, and so on. The single point failure cascades into many more failed systems.

Now that Apple has found a critical weakness in the PC industry, the industrial design of personal computers, the next logical step is to ask how this victory is impacting the Wintel community and what the next logical move might be by Apple. It's as if the Young Warrior has planted a (temporarily) immovable Knight in the face of the enemy King. Resources will be expended removing the Knight that would have otherwise been used in an offensive on another flank.

That's just a taste, so make sure you go and read it!

The Art of War - Exploiting The Critical Failure Path - Applelinks