The Apple Double Play.

I just finished reading an article in PC Magazine that really got me thinking.

The piece was entitled ‘The Apple Product That Really Worries PC Vendors’.

It really got me thinking, especially in light of the fact that the Commonwealth Bank recently decided to arm their staff with MacBook Air laptops.

The interesting this about this was the following:

Branch visitors were free to use iMac, iPad, iPod and Asus touchscreen devices to browse foreign exchange rates, products, and to make appointments with CBA specialists – much like how Apple customers arranged to visit the vendor’s ‘Genius bar’.
The bank also planned to replace internal Dell desktops with MacBook Air notebooks nationwide, allowing employees to choose to operate on either Mac OS or Windows platforms.

Wow! I really mean WOW!

Think about this in terms of the the information from Canalys that I mentioned in this post ‘Wintel Market Share Slips’.

The Commonwealth Bank, the guys who hung on to OS/2 for years past its expiry date are doing a widespread deployment of Apple MacBook Air laptops. This is astounding news.

Here’s the really amazing potential - lets assume that they replace all 4000 Dell laptops with the MacBook Air. Here’s the really interesting maths:

4000 copies of Windows 7 Entreprise, even at the best possible price couldn’t be less that $175 a copy, lets call it $150 just to keep the calculations simple. Lion is $31.99.

That means a saving on OS upgrade costs of $472,040.

Half a Million Dollars saving on an Operating System upgrade!

Where would you want the half million, on your bottom line or on Microsoft’s?

Careful of your answer, your shareholders are watching.

Now Star Trek is a Corporate Strategy. Beam me up. Please!

One of the journalists I like to follow is John Dvorak from PC Magazine.

Opinionated? Yes. Been around long enough to smell the bullshit? Absolutely.

One of the pieces that he wrote that got my interest was one entitled Microsoft’s Wacky New Direction: Star Trek!

But this got me thinking about some of the more practical problems with Microsoft’s (Ballmer's) new idea and why its doomed to failure.

Imagine if you will, for a moment, an office populated with this technology. Hundreds of cube rats in an open plan office, stacked, racked and packed to extract every single dollar of value out of the insanely high rent they’re paying per square metre, all interacting with their computer by voice and having that same computer talk back to them.

In case you have any trouble imagining that go to a loud, busy bar.

Quite apart from the technical issues who would want to work in an environment like that, not the bar, the noise, we’d all love to work in a bar, not great for productivity but fantastic for staff morale.

You know, when you’ve got a CEO talking up stuff like this that Microsoft is in deep, deep trouble and that Ballmer recognises that he’s got a great big target painted on his forehead.

Good luck Steve. I think you’re going to need it.

Does John Dvorak think Microsoft has jumped the shark too?

I came across this post on PC Magazine's website. Its an interesting take on what's happening at Microsoft and given my thoughts on what's happening there I thought I'd add the link here:

Wintel, Death by a Thousand Budget Cuts

Here's the link to my piece on this topic:

Has Microsoft Jumped the Shark?