🚀 go-pugleaf

Dave G Smith <news@pict.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> >>    Dave
> >     Rowland
> 
> >> QT has been the equivalent of a supermarket's loss leader. Designed to
> >> attract customers to the Apple brand.
> 
> >Exactly the point: a supermarket's loss leader is paid for by sales of
> >other goods, so you subsidise a supermarket's loss leader if you buy any
> >profitably priced item from that supermarket.
> 
> That's not subsidy. It's marketing.

It's both.  There's no difference in this case.  The supermarket
subsidises the sale of certain goods from its overall profits.  If you
only but the cheap stuff, you're getting a good deal.

On the other hand, Kwik Save managed to make huge profits by selling
goods at below cost price without using the normal `subsidy' method.
(this works: you bank the money from your cash sales on the day you get
it, and pay for the goods you've sold as late as possible.  You make
profits on the interest earned on the banked money.  The bloke who
started Kwik Save *had* to do it this way, because his bank manager
didn't like him and called in his overdraft.)

> There is a difference. If I buy a pizza
> in my local Co-op, and get a free bag of oven chips (a current offer :-),
> it's a gimmick to get me to buy other stuff, not a subsidy. If I were being
> subsidised then the Co-op would make no money from me. Definitely *not* the
> case. :-)

Such markeing gimmicks are subsidies, and sometimes the supermarkets
*do* give the customer money.  I sometimes manage to buy stuff from the
supermarket at less than cost price.  What do you call that other than a
subsidy?

> It's the same with Apple. They are not subsidising wintel users, they are
> advertising to them. They are building brand awareness. They are hoping
> that wintel users will switch and help contribute to future development.
> That's how they have made their money 'till now. Only it's a bit different
> in the computing world. People don't download QuickTime for Windows and
> then pop out and buy a Mac. They install QTfW and then forget about it,
> it's not visible enough. So Apple are tying something different. Time will
> tell whether they have chosen the correct strategy.
> 
> >> Why should
> >> all that effort go unrewarded?
> 
> >Because the business world isn't a nice place, and anyway there are
> >rewards other than a short-term `money in the bank' kind of reward.
> 
> The business world is not a nice place, so Apple shouldn't make money?

Correct: there's no `should' about it.  If Apple's management does the
job well, then Apple will make money.  If Apple's management does the
job badly, then Apple will lose money.  `Should' doesn't come into it:
the business world has no sympathy, no justice, and no sense of fair
play.  It's dog-eat-dog and the losers go to the wall in no uncertain
fashion.

> >The
> >best reward Apple could have is a migration of users from Wintel to Mac.
> >All other things being equal, the more Apple software Wintel users
> >*need*, the more likely this is to happen.  So there's a lot to be said
> >for Apple supplying software at no charge where this is not commercial
> >suicide.
> 
> Yeah, but at the end of the day if wintel users have the software running
> on Win95 there's no reason to buy a Mac. There is no Mac only PageMaker or
> Photoshop anymore. Wintel users don't see the Mac being better because
> there's nothing on the Mac they can't already do. All they see is dwindling
> marjet share, and no games market.

<shrug>  So what?  That's what Wintel lemmings have always seen.  There
is no job you can do on a Mac but not on a Wintel box.  There are some
jobs you can do on a Wintel box but not on a Mac.  Apple has already
lost the `PC war'.  God knows what'll happen to Apple now it's dropped
the one chance it had of winning the next round: Rhapsody *might* have
been able to take over from Microsoft's OS dominance (assuming Apple
didn't go bust before it became established, which risk is probably why
Jobs decided to drop it).

> None of this is clear cut for Apple. They have a very tough job to do. It's
> very easy for us here to talk about what the company should or shouldn't
> do. At the end of the day though, we haven't got a clue.

True, but nor does Apple's management.  I certainly wouldn't presume to
know what's best for Apple in the short to medium term, but I certainly
*can* make guesses about the long term, and those guesses are as good as
anyones (i.e., pure guesswork and utterly useless)

> Look at the
> widespread objections to the Licensing action taken by Jobs last year. It
> might just have been the best thing to do at the time. The company is in
> much better shape now than it has been for some time. Without a healthy
> Apple, there probably won't be a MacOS.

Drop `probably'.  If Apple dies, the MacOS will (I think) become a curio
because I don't think the source code would be released for future
development.

> PS: As this is slipping into demon.tech.mac.advocacy I intend to take any
> further discussion on this topic to private email.

Probably best.  I've posted this publically out of sheet devilment and
if you want to hurl abuse at me, I suppose I deserve it.

Rowland.

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