Technovia - Latest Comments in Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

scam — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 01:45:58 -0000

Thanks for the awesome article! For 15 years now (I'm 26) I've been building Wintel machines and using them at my home and office because they've always been faster for the money. Windows is terrible, but the hardware has always been the draw. Something goes wrong, you replace it with parts available at any corner computer store, and 45 minutes later you're back up and running. Now, with the new Mac OS available for kickin' PC hardware, maybe both Apple and Microsoft will feel a little more compelled to make better OS's. Since they could concievably now compete for the same hardware. My wife has been BEGGING me for a Mac (school teacher), I might be able to pull the wool over her eyes with a $1,000 PC hardware machine and a Mac OS. In fact, I know she'll never know the difference, I'll be able to sleep at night knowing if something goes wrong, I can fix it myself.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

BillyBallo — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:16:05 -0000

A lot of the Mac-PC war veterans here have a comically skewed view of Apple, and are obviously unfamiliar with the European market. Mid '90s Apple machines cost twice as much and were overall slower (except on the lone, inevitable cherry-picked Photoshop benchmark) and ran less software than Wintel clones. Jobs terminated the clones program because the cloners were making faster, cheaper, better engineered Macs than Apple itself, plain and simple.

Apple won't license OSX for clones because from their perspective the OS is not a shrinkwrapped product to install on assembled hardware (the Windows model). Rather, they see it as the software half of the 'whole widget' Jobs always talks about. It is a rather subtle, non-technical distinction. The emphasis is on offering a perceived cohesive whole, and OSX on clones would disrupt that.

To effectively license OSX they'd also have to compete on hard technical merits and thinner margins, and lose the luxury mistique at the same time. They couldn't wait 3 months after everybody else to introduce a faster Intel CPU for example, for the cloners would do it as soon as possible, like they did in the PPC days. It's a lose-lose proposition for them, even if tech-minded people see it as desiderable since it's technically feasible.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

DrBunsen — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:17:06 -0000

Perhaps another way of expressing your point re the crapness of the era's machines is this:

Apple had always enjoyed a perception of superior quality and ease of use over the competition, going back to the very first Macintosh. By the time of the clones, the perceived gap between them and the competition had narrowed - Apple machines and their OS were, by and large, still superior, but they had lost their way, and they weren't getting better fast enough. You can short-hand this as "crap" if you like, but I'd consider "not LESS crap enough than the competition to justify the margins".

I used the first PowerMac (the 6100) from 1995, with the first compatible version of OS 7, and it was a crashfest. Later versions cleaned up the mess somewhat, but as a user, I might well have said "What?? This is a Mac! I paid a squizillion bucks for it, and it's CRASHING on me?? Screw this, I'll go back to Wintel."

By and large, early releases of System 7 - especially on the PPCs - were a dog's breakfast. 7.6.1 and 8.1 were much tidier, but by then the market perception damage has been done. Throw in some appallingly crippled motherboard designs - like the 5200 you cite above - headless chicken behaviour from R&D and marketing, and you had a growing perception that betting on the Mac platform was a loser's game, developers jumping ship, market share nose-diving, and stock plummeting to $14.

You're quite right that the situation today is different. If anything, it's the opposite. OS X and the Mac platform are high buzz, R&D and marketing act like they work for the same company and keep hitting home runs, developers are leaping into the fray, market share and stock keep on climbing. Apple have no need at all to re-open a licensing program, and they're hardly likely to do so just to be nice, or to go to war against Microsoft.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ian Betteridge — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:02:59 -0000

uh huh, right. Come back when you can build your own iMac, and make it look as good.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

JD — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:35:08 -0000

MAC hardware is obsolete folks.

http://wiki.osx86project.or...

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ian Betteridge — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:09:54 -0000

No worries - done already! Thanks.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

adm — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:03:20 -0000

Aww, that stinks. Sorry for the double post, Ian. Your website was briefly unavailable (as reported by OpenDNS). I should have looked to see if the post actually went through. =/ Feel free to clean that up. They are identical.

Cheers!

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ian Betteridge — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:50:55 -0000

There's a lot of good and interesting points here, Adm. Thank you.

Perhaps saying that the Apple machines of the time were crap was the wrong way to put it. As a range, and compared to today's machines, they obviously lack a lot. But you're right to say that by and large, the licensees weren't making machines that were better. They were, of course, making machines that were faster and cheaper. And your point about the StarMax 6000 (and others) is one that I've echoed myself elsewhere.

So perhaps a better way to put it would be this: The Apple machines of the clone era had little to recommend them in terms of design over a cheaper clone. Whereas today's Macs are exceptionally lovely looking, with very good design features which actually make them physically easier to use, the ones of the years around 1996 were, by and large, pretty dull beige boxes.

If there were Mac clones today, even cheaper and faster ones, I'd still buy Apple's machines - for the wonderful, deep design. I'd rather a 10% slower iMac than an ugly beige thing that I have to hide under a desk.

There were exceptions. The 5200 was, if not a great looking machine, at least a decent all-in-one. The 8600 had the classic K2 case design which geniunely made it much easier to get into.

But these machines were exceptions, not the rule. Today, it's hard to pick out a badly designed Apple computer. Then, it was hard to pick out a good one.

Of course, a lot of this is hindsight: the 5200 looked pretty good, but compared to even a first generation iMac it's a lot less impressive. But the qualities of a machine are often relative to what's around it. Where Apple's design ethos has improved beyond all recognition since then, its competitor's haven't.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

adm — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:30:55 -0000

Ian,

With respect, I think you're being disingenuous when you say the point of your article was not to put forward that Apple should consider re-evaluating a cloning program. If you are honestly only trying to point out that the Apple of today is significantly different than the Apple of 10 years ago, few people would have read your post and I doubt you would even have bothered to type it. I would imagine that it's as obvious to your readers as the weather.

Your point, made in bold, is that Apple lost market share due to the poor quality of their computers. It was this poor quality that caused customers to look elsewhere. Some of them found the equally poor quality clones. Finally, you conclude that since people where buying clones in order to avoid quality concerns from Apple hardware (a dubious conclusion, given the poor quality of the clones and Wintel boxes) and since Apple no longer has these quality concerns, then Apple would do well to reconsider licensing their OS.

The PCC boxes were so much like Wintel boxes that they were regularly reviewed as such <http: findarticles.com="" p="" articles="" mi_m1563="" is_n9_v13="" ai_17519472="">. The Umax boxes were worse. Radius tried that funky wavey front panel, which at least made it obvious that they weren't PC's. But as you probably know, all of them were painful to open and work on. All of them used the same logic board designs, whether or not they used the identical components. All of them were trying to compete with Apple on price while selling less than 10% of Apple's volume. And all of this while the PC's of the day were abhorrently unattractive, with their own - admittedly less proprietary - shoddy workmanship. In the crowd of computers from that era, Apple's really don't seem like they stand out as shoddy.

There are a lot of issues to harp on from 1995-1997. I wouldn't dig in your heals over the quality of the Apple line.

As an aside, Apple almost never demonstrated hardware that it wasn't ready to release within the next quarter. I bring this point up because Motorola and Power Computing regularly did. The StarMax 6000, as you know, was a CHRP box running the fast G3 chips coming off the press. I'm certain you know this, but it bears mentioning to readers who don't. When chips come off the press, their ability to clock up to higher speeds is not equal. Some are better than others, which allow them to be clocked up faster. The distribution of chips coming off the assembly line, then, looks a bit like a bell curve, with the majority of the chips unable to reach the speeds of the very fastest chips, who are in the small minority at the beginning of the curve. If all you have to do is put together a handful of demo units, then you can really pull out the stops and hand-pick a few high-end chips from that curve, stick them in a StarMax 6000 demo unit, and bring it to Macworld. If, on the other hand, you have to be ready to ship a few hundred thousand computers with these chips in them, that's obviously a different story. Power Computing was famous for releasing the very fastest chips in their computers about three months before Apple. But when they were only going to sell 100,000 computers this year, with the majority of those having low to mid range performance CPU's, they didn't have to wait very long to stockpile enough high end CPU's. Apple, who sold more computers in a month than PCC sold in a year, typically had to stockpile for, you guessed it, three months before they could announce their product.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

vic — Mon, 26 May 2008 08:56:55 -0000

Interesting discussion. My perception is that Apple is intent on building its brand internationally by controlling the buying experience. Clones would devalue the Apple brand without question. Further, as a company Apple strives to maintain margins even at the expense of market share—I do not expect that preoccupation to change.

Also please observe how limited the computer product line is compared to the competition. Simplification is the rule----marginal products have no place in the Mac ecosystem.

Last point: in those lost Clone years Apple made (assembled) their own boxes. Not today. No cost disadvantage now given Far east contract manufacturing coupled with Apple's superb supply chain management and buying power.

For the record my wife and I own a 15" MB Pro, 24" iMac, G4 Tower, a dead PowerMac and a have veritable Mac Museum in the garage including a Mac Classic II—great machine for its time.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ian Betteridge — Mon, 26 May 2008 05:14:17 -0000

Some good points there, Max.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ian Betteridge — Mon, 26 May 2008 05:12:16 -0000

The Power Mac G3 first appeared in November 1997, the same month that Apple ended the clone programme. What you probably don't know - because you never got hold of the machine - is that the Motorola StarMax 6000, which would have been released at the same time, was actually faster than the first Apple G3's. I know. I helped test them.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ian Betteridge — Mon, 26 May 2008 05:08:57 -0000

<shrug> The biggest selling Mac and longest-established magazine in the country I lived in. But obviously, from your perspective, if someone disagrees with you the right thing to do is question their credentials.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Max — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:17:10 -0000

Ian, I'm not sure that Apple needs the cloners today or would even want them. As you and Ron point out, Apple doesn't really attack the low end of the market, but there's a good chance that if it ceded that niche to other companies via license, the shoddiness of cut-rate materials and labor would make tech support for such machines a real headache. The cloners would blame OS X for troubles, Apple would fault the hardware and customers would fume. My guess is that most lowlow-end computer buyers aren't tech-savvy and would needs lots of hand-holding. Apple would still have to carry the cost of developing OS X and might even have to help the cloners with hardware design.

Remember also that 10+ years ago Apple had dropped the ball on improving and ultimately replacing Mac OS--it wasn't just the hardware that sucked. Apple was desperate to expand its sales after Win95 proved "good enough", but didn't find too many takers. It ultimately licensed the OS to companies that were either new to making computers or merely startups. and IIRC the license terms weren't exactly stacked in Apple's favor. These companies had NO established customer base for computer sales and were offering their machines in the same geographic regions as Apple. They were bound to cannibalize Apple's sales (MacWorld.com might have archived articles analyzing the impact of clones' sales on Apple's sales). The cloners also didn't have to carry the cost of software and hardware R&D as Apple did.

Today, Apple stores and the halo effects of iPod and iPhone sales have helped Jobs et al break out of the ghetto and reach new customers--something the cloners were supposed to do for Apple. Jobs probably doesn't think that the lowlow end of compute sales is worth the headache of supporting low-quality hardware and coddling computer newbies. He is apparently NOT averse to letting other companies modify Apple machines and re-sell them, though--note the Axiotron touch-screen tablet Mac available at Other World Computing.

http://eshop.macsales.com/s...

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ian Betteridge — Sun, 25 May 2008 13:12:42 -0000

I guess the point of the post was simply to say that the Apple of today is not the Apple of 1997. It's a much, much stronger beast with much better machines. That changes the ground rules a lot when you consider the option of licensing.

That means, of course, that simply saying "they tried it once and look what happened" isn't a good argument. In fact, what it's basically saying that the Apple of today couldn't take on and beat a bunch of companies like Power. That, to me, seems crazy.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ian Betteridge — Sun, 25 May 2008 13:07:55 -0000

Some very good points there, Ron. So yes, let's agree to disagree :)

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ian Betteridge — Sun, 25 May 2008 13:06:41 -0000

Let me illustrate what I mean about the difference in machines then and now - in fact, between then and just a couple of years later. Imagine that you had a choice between a machine which had the design of the first iMac, and the 4400 - but the 4400 has been magically upgraded so that it's processor speed, hard drive, and memory are equivalent in performance to the iMac.

Now, which one would you think was the better machine? I'm hoping you'll agree that it would be the iMac! :)

And that's the difference between the Apple of 1996, pre-Jobs, and the Apple of today. Then, Apple really relied on two elements to differentiate it: the Mac OS (7), and to a lesser extent the performance of PowerPC compared to the Intel chips of the day. And unfortunately, it had headed down a few dead-ends in software which had hobbled the development of OS 7 (Copland, OpenDoc, the whole Taligent mess), and the PowerPC had proved to not quite be the powerhouse that everyone expected it to be. And, with a few honourable exceptions (like the "K2" case design), it's industrial design was not as great as it used to be.

Today, Jobs has addressed all those issues. OS X is leading the pack of operating systems in ease of use, aesthetics, and power. Performance is second to none. And industrial design... well, the countless awards no-doubt decorating Jonny Ive's office speak for themselves.

(BTW, I worked on MacUser UK for eight years, from 1995 to 2003, ending my time there as editor. And yes, I did give some machines a pretty bad review :) )

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

James Bailey — Sun, 25 May 2008 12:33:12 -0000

Hmm, so you don't think Apple should restart its cloning program? Then what was the point of the post? If and when Apple determines that cloning is good to the bottom line, then they will start doing it again. I'm not about to second guess Apple's current management. They have done nearly everything right since Jobs came back.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ron — Sun, 25 May 2008 11:14:43 -0000

Peace, Ian.
We can agree to disagree. I understand what you're saying. To some extent, I think you're right. I just don't think enough people will see it your way. Too few people understand quality.
We can rejoice, however, that enough people DO understand quality to allow the Mac to survive and prosper.
But remember: only one company has survived by licensing their OS. Everyone else who has done it in the commodity market has failed. Apple is not eager to see if it can survive, after already once failing. Even if your reasoning is sound, they've got enough evidence to suggest it would harm them again, if they tried it again. And look at them now. They're absolutely thriving. They're firing on all cylinders. Why do you so fervently wish to seem them embark upon such a questionable distraction? It would greatly lengthen the time between releases of OS X, for instance, and that extra time wouldn't be in adding features but in testing all the different platforms. It would take more time, and there would STILL be more bugs.

And frankly, Macs just are as overly pricey as they once were. At a given price point, they're competitive. It's just that they don't exist at the lower price points. Like I say, though, Mac cloners historically didn't go after that price point, and I don't see any compelling reason to think they will. And if Apple tries to word the license that way, it'll get struck down in court (think about it a second), and everyone will then immediately pile up on the high end.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ron — Sun, 25 May 2008 11:02:30 -0000

To be fair to Ian, I don't think Microsoft's PR manuals are telling him to say that the current Macs are so much superior to potential clones that Apple could prosper if they allowed clones again.

And that's what he's saying. I disagree with him, but I think you're being pretty unfair. I don't remember what machine I had right before my PowerComputing machine. I think it was a 5200 (one of the all-in-one things). I loved the little thing. (and you need to take the iMac out of your list, because that one belongs to the era Ian is complimenting, if I understand him). As much as I loved my 5200, I went nuts for the iMac. I normally buy computers at a certain interval. But the iMac was the first machine that ever made me break that cycle. I think I had a 6 month old machine, and I still bought an iMac the very first time I saw one.

Strictly speaking, what he's saying is true: compared to today's machines, the machines of the cloning-time were crap. My point is that it's not a worthwhile comparison. See my other posts, where I've already gone on at too much length. (Pause while I hearken back to the first time I ever saw the iMac. SUCH a thing of beauty. Bondy Blue, baby. I kinda miss the colors... but I have to admit that Bondy Blue was really the only one I ever flipped over. I never understood why they couldn't bring that color back. Oh well. I still own that iMac, and it still runs. Soooooo slow :) But I remember when we thought it was blazing fast)

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ron — Sun, 25 May 2008 10:48:18 -0000

**sorry... the sentence above should read "...and it DOES everything yours does, plus it's got a floppy."

Freudian slip :)

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ron — Sun, 25 May 2008 10:45:31 -0000

You keep saying that. But you could say the same thing about PCs. "Compared to the PCs of today (and that's the important point here), they were crap." I'm not a fan of Windows or of the quality of modern PCs, but they're loads better that what was running around in 1995. Such comparisons can be reiterated endlessly, but I just don't think it gets us anywhere.

Compared to the Macs of today, the Macs in 1995 were crap. And so were PCs. PCs have gotten better. Macs have gotten even better still. But still, I think the consensus back then was that Macs of the time were better than PCs of the time. We lost a lot of people to Win95 because not enough people believed that, to be sure. But it wasn't because of this equation
AbsoluteValue(Win95) > AbsoluteValue(Mac)
but rather this one
BangForTheBuck(Win95) > BangForTheBuck(Mac).

In every forum you can still see tons of people who think the second metric is the only one that counts. And they view the first metric as just being flash and glitter, only for suckers. Too few people will understand the value proposition you think they'll see. They'll look at
$$(Brand Name Mac) > $$(generic mac)
and then think
Mac == Mac
and
BangForTheBuck(Brand Name Mac) < BangForTheBuck(generic mac)
especially at the high end, and suddenly, the question will once again go to "Why'd you buy an _Apple_ Mac? What a sucker. I got one from Two Guys in a Basement, Inc. and it doesn't everything yours does, PLUS it's got a floppy. People still use those, you know." And next year, they'll be saying "Christ, I hate Macs. They crash all the time." They'll be deaf to people who tell them their Brand Name Mac doesn't crash like that. They'll still be angry at Apple for failing to do enough testing on their POS.

Which is why that $100 Apple might charge for a license doesn't count even as ($100 - TheCostOfPackaging). In allowing clones, Apple has to commit a lot more resources to testing these non-Apple designs.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ron — Sun, 25 May 2008 10:16:42 -0000

I'm very sorry I missed your reviews. "Compared to the Macs you'll see 13 years from now, this 1995 Mac is crap." What magazine was that in? (I was reading MacWeek back then. They talked about the future too, but they only managed about 1-2 months in advance, the poor saps.)
1) Nobody dropped Apple for that reason. Nobody.
2) Compared to the standards of Apple today, all computers back then really were crap.
3) Compared to the standards of Apple today, all other computers right now really are crap.
4) Compared to the standards of Apple today, whatever clones you hope to see really will be crap.

That's one of the things that turned Apple around. The machines are extremely high quality now. That why Apple and J. Ive have the record for number of Black Pencil design awards. These machines aren't just flash. There's great cleverness embodied in these designs. I can see why you might feel that this would be enough to protect them against clones in a way that it didn't in 1995. But you'll still be wrong if they open up those gates again.

There will be people who would have bought a Mac that will buy a clone instead. This much is certain. Who will that be? The cloners won't go after the markets you dream about for the exact same reason Apple doesn't: because they're small. Either in terms of margins, or in terms of percentage, they're small. Apple has found the sweet spots in their market. After a very short pause, they'll do exactly what PowerComputing did. They'll go after the high end, undercutting Apple by enough that people will turn a blind eye to the lower quality of the machine. When challenged, they'll re-cast the value proposition as "bang for the buck". Apple will lose high end sales, high end margins. These things WILL happen.

You appear to be saying that these losses will be offset but something else that will happen as well, like an expansion of the market. Each high end hardware sale lost would have to be offset by a LOT of software licenses. If Apple loses a $3000 sale and their margin at that price point is 33% (which is close to the mark, if memory serves), they have to sell how many licenses of Mac OS X to make up for that? Assuming they charged $100 per license and that we considered that $100 pure profit, the cloner would have to sell 10 machines non-cannibalizing sales for every 1 cannibalizing one. That’s the argument you have to make. And not only that, because it won't be $100, and it isn't pure profit, and they won't be growing the market by tenfold.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ian Betteridge — Sun, 25 May 2008 06:13:32 -0000

God bless you Zato, how I've missed you. :)

I'll repeat again: I tested a lot of those machines. Compared to the Macs of today (and that's the important point here), they were crap.

Re: Why Mac cloning today wouldn't be like Mac cloning ten years ago

Ian Betteridge — Sun, 25 May 2008 06:10:27 -0000

No, that's not quite correct. Apple initally licensed a set of motherboard designs to cloners, which it also used itself in some machines (like the aforementioned 4400). This meant that what the licensees could do in terms of innovative design was a little limited.

However, in collaboration with (I think - memory on this is hazy) IBM, Apple created CHRP - the Common Hardware Reference Platform. This was a standardised system archiecture for PowerPC-based systems, effectively a set of ground rules to create motherboards. It specified things like using OpenFirmware - and in theory, any mobo designed to CHRP could, with the addition of the correct Mac ROM, run Mac OS.

That was the big danger point for Apple. If other manufacturers could build mobos without using Apple designs, they could build better mobos than Apple - at which point, Apple would have effectively begun the slide to being an OS vendor.

Unless, of course, it improved it's own machines...