Editorial

Posted on 5 Dec 2008 at 15:42

 

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Psystar's anti-trust case highlights what Mac fans have known for years: Apple's biggest asset is its Mac OS X operating system.

Apple can crack open the Pomagne: it's won the first the first round of its battle with the cloners by convincing a judge that it doesn't enjoy a virtual market monopoly. And you know what swung it? That long, repetitive I'm a Mac advertising campaign that so riled Microsoft. Call it the one stone that killed two birds.

That the company's belief it operates in a multi-player market was proven isn't surprising for anyone looking in from the outside, but it must have been cause for relieved sighs in countless areas of technical innovation.

Take Sky as an example. You could argue that it enjoys even more of a monopoly than Apple. The software inside its Plus boxes is about as proprietary as it gets, yet you don't see the likes of Virgin Media arguing that it should be allowed to port it to its own hardware, despite the two companies' highly public spat.

Instead, Virgin Media boxes use an alternative firmware, and with it achieve a similar range of features. Psystar and the other clone wannabes, you could argue, should do the same. For them there is a widely-used, highly compatible alternative that they're free to license. It's called Windows.

Now admittedly the clone wars aren't enormous news outside of the Mac community, but the fact that there is so much interest in running Apple's operating system on non-Apple hardware proves what constitutes the company's most valuable asset: Mac OS X. Without it, its hardware is just a pretty PC line-up with little to differentiate it from Sony, HP or Lenovo.

That's why I believe talk of an early uncaging for Snow Leopard is misguided. Talk in certain circles has the big cat appearing in January, but really there's no need. Windows 7 is still a good one year to 18 months away, and Microsoft has already stated that it won't be rushed on nailing a date, so it could well slip. Leopard itself is doing well, attracting new users to the platform in untold numbers. There is too much at stake to risk rushing out Snow Leopard before it's totally ready and causing a repeat of the Mac OS X 10.0 debacle.

Apple need only look to its closest competitor, Microsoft, to see how much harm a rushed release can cause. Vista arrived before it was ready and was poorly received. This is the company's one chance to capitalise on that, and at the same time learn from its rival's mistakes.

Author: Nik Rawlinson