unfinished work

This article by got me thinking about Apples resurgence. It makes perfect sense that the Mac would be taking market share from Windows/Intel now. We have for the first time arrived a point when PCs are good enough for most things.

Earlier, when hard drives were not big enough, graphics cards not fast enough, software not useful enough, the Intel PC and Microsoft operating system improved faster because they could capitalize on the innovations of all the entrepreneurs working around that platform. Now PCs are good enough. Additional features just make them harder to use. The premium to day is in making them easy enough so that most users can get most of the value out of the machines they already own. In this world Apple’s focus on simple integrated user experience trumps the WINTEL platforms relatively more open architecture. 

So the relative social value and probably the relative stock market value of Apple vs Microsoft should have followed roughly this course. When the Mac was first introduced, Apple should have surged becasue they were showing off the capabilities of a promising medium, As people adopted PCs and became familiar enough to know what was missing the WINTEL platform shoudl have surged becasue of its superior ability ot absorb innovation from elsewhere. Once the market matured to the point that most people had most of the power and features they needed, Apple should have surged again and Wintel lagged.  I wonder if the data would show that this is what happened.

An even more interesting question is how the fortunes of the more open web services will compare with those that are more closed when considered in the context of the markets maturity. In theory the closed services should have a greater impact early, but then fall behind the more open services as the need to innovate becomes more important than ease of use, and then the closed services should close the gap again once most user have most of what they need and the focus shifts again to ease of use.