Some analysts say that Apple’s innovation is slowing, and that’s not true, Tom Yager opines in an Infoworld column.
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Citing an article in an (unnamed) business publication that said Apple faced an uncertain future if it didn’t innovate soon, Yager writes: “Is Apple really in danger because it hasn’t made a major new product announcement in the past 30 days? If that’s true, the industry is on a tighter release schedule than I thought. There is no lack of innovation at Apple; most competitors fare poorly by comparison.”
If anything, Apple is amazingly consistent with a steady drive in pushing technology forward, he adds. Yager also feels the company is doing a lot of other things well, such as offering Power Mac users a chance to swap out their power supplies and fans for quieter units, X11, Safari, IDE storage, 802.11g, the 17-inch PowerBook, iLife, .Mac, and client-side Java. As for things that Apple has done wrong, Yager’s list includes the exclusive deal with Sony Ericsson on syncable mobile phones, developer training (and documentation), and the lack of a strategy to get hardware vendors to create Mac OS X device drivers.
The writer also offers the unusual opinion that if Microsoft ends up ruining or discontinuing Virtual PC after buying Connectix, it may do the Mac more good than harm. “The number of Mac users who want to run Windows software is scant at best, and software emulation of the x86 CPU (though Connectix does as well with it as any could) is an ugly way to manage it,” Yager says.