Now that Microsoft have given them $150M, Apple won't go bust quite so soon. But the fact is that in the last couple of years or so, only in one quarter did they profit. Every other quarter they made massive losses.
Once upon a time, if you saw a PC dealer's ad in a newspaper, there would always be an 'Apple PC' listed, but not so now. Mac adverts seem much less frequent now. Recently, Apple hit their lowest share value in twelve years. The question is, if Apple go bust, What will this mean for Mac users? And indeed - What will it mean for Amiga users?
A part of me wants Apple to go bust. A mischeivous and naughty part of me says that Macs deserve to go through what the Amiga has had to go through in the last few years. Many a Mac user has been guilty of insulting the Amiga, so let's see how they manage without a parent company for a few years... But before I consider whether every Amiga lover should want Apple to go bust (or care at all), let me ask how the Mac will be affected.
If we are being gloomy, we will conclude that the Mac won't last long without Apple. The Amiga was at least very popular when Commodore went bust. The No. 1 home machine, but now reduced to a fraction of its former glory. But the Mac at the moment is already in the same situation as the Amiga in many ways - it certainly isn't (or ever has been) as popular as the Amiga was. So how can it survive when the Amiga barely has?
What are the differences between the Mac and the Amiga, as far as its users are concerned? I would say that the Amiga is much more of a home users machine, where as the Mac is used widely in DTP (as well as Internet surfing, schools, etc), as well as having home users. Of course, the Amiga has niches in 3D graphics, video, animation, etc, but sadly these niches by their nature have a much smaller market than something like DTP.
But I'm rambling. Let's imagine that in early 1998, Apple bust (I'm not trying to be prophetic regarding the date, it's just an example). This in itself will lose a lot of Mac users, in business and in the home. Let's face it, if we were dealing with cars, TVs, or whatever, if a company making a particular model goes bust, you just don't buy it. No support, no warranty, no future... and even if you did want it, you wouldn't be able to buy it. We as Amiga users no different of course, but that's another story. Companies using Macs are slowly changing over to using PCs anyway, but this will be surely speeded up with Apple's demise. What business will run around trying to get hold of some Macs? Mac home users are also going to be more likely to buy PCs, although presumably there will always remain a core group of dedicated Mac users.
Of course, the Mac has one big advantage. It is already licensed. I don't know if Mac cloners would be allowed to carrying on producing Macs if Apple went bust, or whether they would just carrying on regardless. Even so, it is reasonable to assume that the number of companies cloning Macs would fall without Apple, prefering to produce PCs.
There is also of course lack of development. System 8 has been released (although at the moment, Apple haven't licensed it to Mac cloners), but there would be no more.
My Mac contact tells me that Apple are more in control of the high end market (that is, £4000+), leaving the low end (well, £1000+) more to cloners. Mainly thanks to the PowerPC being faster than the Pentium, the Mac can claim to be the fastest desktop computer around (regardless of price). This would be difficult to achieve without Apple, unless cloners take on the production of such machines.
If things went the same way for the Mac regarding buyouts as they have done for the Amiga, then that would be very bad (for the Mac). Imagine; a year with no Macs being produced, and then some (German?) company buys out Apple. All well and good if they start things moving again, but what if all they do is release a few of the Macs that are available now, at more expensive prices than they cost now? Supposing they brought out 'Apple PCs' which ran Windoze on Pentiums, but had a nice Apple logo sticker...
Okay, so it would be rather uncanny in things turned out justt like that, but the point I'm making is that a company buying Apple out won't necessarily save the Mac, just as the Man from Escom didn't exactly save the Amiga. And then if this company goes bust, and the Mac is bought out again a year later...
You see, Apple going bust may very likely not be a 'short term problem' for the Mac, as we hoped it would be for the Amiga when Commodore went bust. Three Years from when Apple go bust (2001?), the Mac could still be feeling the consequences.
Also, one of the good things about a PowerAmiga is being able to emulate a PowerMac.
But looking on the other side of things, if you wanted a PowerMac, you'd buy one - presumably, people buying PowerAmigas would be primarily interested in the PowerAmiga side anyway. If Apple where healthy, Macs were doing fine, it is easy to imagine that 'newbies' to the PPC, such as AmigaOS, pOS and also BeOS would find it hard to become accepted. But if Apple went bust, and MacOS was out, maybe it would be time for these 'new' OSes to take over. It's like; AmigaOS/pOS - the new operating systems which run on PowerMac hardware. Certainly machines like the PIOS would be a much more attractive buy if Apple had gone bust the previous week.
Well, in conclusion I don't think Apple going bust would be any great disaster for the Amiga, except for PPC availability. After all, the Amiga's still here after Commodore and Escom going bust, I'm sure it can cope without Apple...
Mark