🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4e5nsb$1n56@seminole.gate.net> cirby@gate.net (Chad Irby) writes:

   : Again, Apple vs. a single PC vendor. How about Mac's vs. all PCes?

   How about it?  Apple isn't really competing against every PC manufacturer 
   in the world.  It's just competing for enough market share to make money 
   and pay for R&D.  Now, if the PC makers had some sort of pact where they 
   would bail each other out when they got into financial straits, you might 
   have a point, but when PC vendors like Packard Bell, AST, and the others 
   are struggling just to stay afloat, you're better off *not* comparing 
   them to Apple.

There are essentially two markets for <$5000 desktop machines at
present: the PC architecture and the Mac architecture.  This
segmentation occurs because the two classes of machines are not
hardware and software interoperable with each other.  There is some
inter-segment competition because the machines can both do many of the
same things, but most people want either a Mac or a PC.

The PC market is very fragmented in terms of vendors: there are a lot
of them competing against each other.  The Macintosh market is very
different: Apple owns the lion's share (until very recently, they
owned the entire market).

Few people buy PC's by brand name.  The various brands are similar
enough to one another (they all run the same software and essentially
all can share peripherals).  The choice between PC and Mac is
fundamental; the choice between Gateway and Dell isn't.  With Macs,
until recently your only choice was to buy from Apple.  Due to its
proprietary control over the OS, you essentially couldn't buy a
machine that ran Macintosh software without buying it from Apple.
Apple had a monopoly over the Mac market (certainly a horizontal
monopoly over the hardware).

Comparing Apple with Packard Bell or AST or Compaq or any other
individual PC vendor is silly -- they are in very different positions
within their respective market segments.  Apple isn't competing
against Compaq per se.  They're competing against the entire PC market
as a whole.
-- 
Robert Krawitz <rlk@tiac.net>           http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Member of the League for Programming Freedom  -- mail lpf@uunet.uu.net
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