Year Of The Mac?

The other day, an interesting article entitled Ten Reasons To Buy Windows Vista made the rounds of the tech sites and linking blogs. Free tip for the author, Michael Desmond: with little more than the judicious use of Word’s find and replace feature (replace “Vista” with “OS X”) you can resell the article to MacWorld or some other Mac publication. Cash making tip noted, Michael Desmond is completely correct, Vista will be a compelling upgrade to Windows XP.

I can personally attest to the gulf that has opened between OS X and Windows XP after using a Windows machine as my primary computer for the past few weeks. To cite one example: Internet Explorer. Sure, at one time IE may have been the best browser around but at one time, most of North Dakota was ruled by dinosaurs. In comparison to any modern browser, IE is just horrible. There are, naturally, other examples of XP’s backwardness, but many of the things that would bother one user (have you seen Windows Movie Maker?) would be of little interest to most.

In any event, OS X is significantly ahead of XP. As alluded to earlier, much of what makes OS X better will be incorporated into Windows Vista. Sure, there will be shouts of Vista being a lame clone of OS X, but appropriating others innovations is a time honored method of product improvement. No one besides the executives at Ford called other carmakers thieves for also including intermittent wiper blades.

All this means that, for the market share obsessed, this is an interesting moment in time. Even with all the turmoil surrounding the switch to Intel, (big deal? not a big deal? you can’t get a straight answer from Apple) this is the biggest lead in operating systems since Microsoft users labored under the command line. Therefore, common wisdom would tell you, this should be the year of the Mac.

However, as long as Apple has been making computers, every year has been hailed as the year-o’-Apple by someone. In the days when Parker Lewis Can’t Lose entertained the three viewers of the fledgling Fox network the Mac Classic was going to propel Apple into the stratosphere. In the mid nineties, when The X-Files ruled the airwaves, it was the inherent superiority of the PowerPC that would rocket Apple to the top of the heap. When Survivor was smashing ratings records, it was apparent that iMovie and other iLife apps were the programs that would finally help Apple turn the corner. In the age of, gag, American Idol the Mac mini was thought to be Apple’s rocket ride to widespread acceptance. None of these years quite lived up to expectations. Can one reasonably expect 2006 to be anything more than another Mac-fan acclaimed year of the Mac that falls far short of those vaunted expectations?

Surprisingly, there are reasons for the perpetually hopeful to smile. Early reports by CENS relate that Apple is planning to sell over ten-million computers this year. To put a little perspective on that number, Apple sold 4.5 million computers in all of 2005. Will the iPod halo effect finally come to pass? Perhaps, but equally as likely is that all the coverage associated with the switch to Intel has given consumers an exact moment to buy.

If it is going to be the year of the Mac, there is one thing Apple needs to do as soon as possible: Get the Intel powered iBooks (undoubtedly dubbed MacBooks) out the door. The low-cost half of Apple’s laptop line, according to cited report, accounted for 70% of Apple’s laptop sales last year and, in the low-priced world of Dells, Apple has to have a semi-price-competitive Intel laptop as soon as possible.

When Vista ships it will generate a lot of coverage. People will rave about the new operating system and Mac users will snidely note that Widgets, tabbed browsing and other new Vista niceties are so 2005, while glibly pointing out that there is yet another revision to OS X on the horizon. Which is all true, but the distance between the two OSes will be considerably smaller. If Apple wants to strike, now is the time.

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