Comments on: Is Apple's success the result of luck or skill?

The Mac maker's growing success in the computing market, claiming 10.6 percent of the U.S. laptop market, can be attributed to both smart positioning and lucky positioning.

[solitare_pax]

Skill and Luck. In the 1990's when Jobs was out, the idiots in charge made the same mistakes Dell and HP make today - they cranked out a dozen slightly different models and marketed them for different specific niches, and many could not be upgraded to save your soul.

Luckily, Jobs came back, and turned things around somehow. No, he did not get everything right - we could still use a good mid-level Mac box between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro - but he got a lot done right. Coming up with the iTunes and iPod music selling model after all the chaos of Napster and other files sharing services was a great idea - I am not so sure about the iPhone.

Like Warren Buffett and the stock market, or Bill Gates and Windows, he seems to generally have the skill and instinct to steer the company right.

[onchu_64]

Apple's success is pretty easy to understand. It's all in the advertising. 25% of Mac users use Macs for specific purposes and applications at which Macs are generally better than Windows. The other 75% are desperate hipsters who lack anything resembling an identity of their own, so they try to define themselves by buying and latching onto whatever trend is popular at the moment. Why else would anyone even want a Mac (or PC for that matter) bumper sticker? Are people who didn't write any of the code or build their own computers supposed to be proud of the computer they use?

It's not a coincidence that the "I'm a Mac" ads don't bother to focus on hardware of software. Instead the entire ad campaign is pretty much "Use a PC (with Windows) and you're old and boring, use a Mac (which is also a PC) and you're a younger, cooler, original thinker who's not afraid to go against the crowd, because you're better than them."

That isn't to say that Mac's aren't good, though in my opinion they're overpriced and not any better than a PC running Windows. But if I'm to judge the Mac's success by the Mac users I've been unfortunate enough to get stuck next to (and I do), most are buying based on image, not performance. I'm sorry for those of you Mac users who actually bought one for a reason. It's not your fault Apple is catering to the clueless.

Having said that, I'm not trying to promote M$ or Windows. They have problems of their own, which is why, for the time being, I'll stick to Linux (which also has issues, but doesn't try to prevent you from fixing them on your own).

[thejimisrad]

I know no one is probably reading this anymore but here goes anyways.

First Apple is no longer a computer company in the traditional sense but a consumer electronics company with consumer being the key word. This includes their notebooks along with their desktop lines. And in this realm they have had success but overblown success. They have done well in this department by skill and mostly by luck just like every other company with success.

Here are just a few examples where luck has been the key to either their survival or success.

- MS subsidizing them in the 90's with both cash and product. With out these the company goes under.

- MS being investigated for antitrust. Related to the above in that MS basically had to prop them up as token opposition (which it is still today). But also, MS is no longer able to include the functionality and control over the OS that Apple can. With out hard numbers I would guess that a large chunk of the problems consumers have with Windows is directly related to crapware. MS is also largely barred from adding many value added features.

-Apple lucked in the timing of release of the Ipod after the first round of law suits with out one hitting them.

-Apple lucked out that IBM was transitioning out of the hardware market (desktop and laptop) and a new brand was on the thinkpad. HP was distracted by the mess that Finronio made that cost them brand loyalty and quality marks that have only been able to recover over the last 2 or 3 years.

-Apple also lucked out with a favorable deal with HP on the Ipod. This allowed them to be placed in Walmarts Targets and Best Buys where most people buy Ipods.

-Apple lucked out that Sony fell asleep at the wheel. If Sony came out with a MP3 Walkman instead of playing around with their format and actually made some models Apple probably would not have oxygen in the market and the traditional CE companies would have dominated.

-This one can not be understated Apple lucked out because of Motorola's problems in the last decade. First the failure of Motorola to keep up with their processors causing Apple to go to Intel along with Motorola's failure to follow up the Razr.

-They lucked out that it took Microsoft years to respond to negative ads.