There was a time when I didn’t like Apple… at all.  I thought that the company’s products were overpriced playthings not worthy of the enterprise or as contenders for the serious work of business.

Today, though, that’s changed… I’m writing this blog post on my MacBook Pro Retina, which is sitting next to my iPhone 5s, and across the table sits my iPad.  I guess you could say that I’ve gone to the dark side.

Of course, I still run a Windows 8 virtual machine so that I can get the best of both worlds.  Frankly, I made the jump to Apple more for hardware than software reasons.  I got frustrated with relatively low quality, compromising specifications, and constant frustration that was the world of PC hardware.

Since my move to MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, I’ve found myself better able to focus on getting work done and focusing less on making sure my platform was stable.  For times when I need to test, I maintain a full lab with servers, storage, UPS, and networking. For everything else, there is my Retina.

Creating + Owning Markets

Since the advent of the iPod, Apple has been on something on a roll, creating whole new markets and then owning those markets.  This has been true of music players, smartphones, and tablets.  Apple made no qualms about charging a premium for what the company considered – and rightly so – were premium products.  A top of the line MacBook is going to set you back $3,000 when a really nice Windows laptop might cost1/2 to 2/3 that amount.  However, when it comes to “it just works”, people are willing to pay that premium.

Each time Apple has created a market, it has dominated that market for a period of time.  As competitors join the space, Apple’s overall share has waned, but the market has also grown in that time, resulting in a win/win situation for all involved.  Better yet for Apple, the company has been able to maintain its high margins even as competitors undercut Apple’s price.

However, it appears as if Apple is beginning to realize that this trend cannot go on forever, particularly as the company has moved into an evolutionary product release cycle as opposed to a revolutionary one.  In the past couple of years, nothing that Apple has released has necessarily redefined whole markets, but the company has continued to iterate extremely well.  For example, Retina displays have helped push high density displays to other areas of the market, but in and of themselves, they’re basically just an improvement over existing displays.

New iPad lineup features free software for good reason

This week, Apple released a whole slew of new updates – both hardware and software.  As was expected, the world can now enjoy an iPad Mini in all of its Retina glory and the ultrathin iPad Air boasts impressive new specifications.  New Retina-based MacBook Pros also joined the new lineup.  Again, however, these are basically iterations over the previous generation.

That’s not necessarily a terrible thing as Apple has tended to release a lot of game-changing devices, but the time will come when Apple needs to find a new device market.

In the meantime, however, it appears as if Apple is beginning to take steps to buy new market share using its existing devices, including the ones just announced.  The company is not lowering the prices of the hardware devices themselves, but they did announce that the new version of OS X and iWork will be free with purchases of new supported devices.  Sure, upgrades to OS X weren’t really that expensive anyway and the individual iWork components weren’t that expensive either, but there are some important messages here that should be understood:

• Apple isn’t charging you for the OS anymore.  It’s become a commodity.  Apps are where the big money exists, particularly when Apple gets 30% of the take.

• For those that buy new hardware, why not give the iWork suite a shot before you buy Microsoft Office for Mac?  After all, it’s free and might do what you want.  This is absolutely a shot across Microsoft’s bow, especially as Microsoft attempts to move its own tools into iOS and OS X.

This week’s announcement was about introducing new (and, yes, compelling) hardware, but at the same time, allowing people to remain in the ecosystem without additional charge is certainly compelling, particularly when users have traditionally been faced with hundred dollar operating system upgrades on an annual basis.  Apple’s users will remain faithfully in the fold and allowed to stay current with the “new stuff” even after a few years of service.  Of course, Apple will lose out on the revenue generated by OS upgrades and iWork sales, but if the company can increase their overall market share across both mobile and desktop spaces, it will be well worth the cost.

The new OS strategy for Apple, Microsoft + Google

photo credit: Enthuan

Apple’s ecosystem has long been considered as easier to use than Microsoft’s, and this step is another bump in the road that the company has smoothed out.  That will play very well to consumers that grow weary of Windows issues.  In addition, Apple is more than aware that Google is a huge competitor that gives away its operating system.  While Apple has done this in the mobile space since the inception of iOS, this levels the playing field with the desktop market.  As users increasingly work with multiple devices on multiple platforms, this convergence is bound to be seen as a positive.

It’s entirely possible that this move will force Microsoft to take a similar approach to its operating system.  However, it seems that this was already starting to happen in Redmond, anyway, with the release of a free Windows 8.1 for existing users of Windows 8.  Unlike Microsoft, Apple is allowing free upgrades from operating system versions that go all the way back to OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).  Microsoft’s offer extends only to existing users of Windows 8.  Microsoft enterprise-based volume license agreements for Windows desktop are additive licenses – the target systems must already have a Windows OS – so Microsoft could be charging enterprises for those additions while making the base Windows itself a free platform.